END
ENDNOTES
Ch’ang-sheng-tien 長生殿, Lasting-life Palace-hall:
(i) The name of a T’ang dynasty imperial palace-hall. Seemingly a “fasting palace-hall” (chai-tien 齋殿). Wang P’u 王溥 (922 - 982), Assembly of the vital matters of the T’ang dynasty (T’ang hui-yao 唐會要), says: “In the Tenth Month of the First Year of the Heaven-treasure reign period [2nd November – 2nd December AD 742] in Florescence-purity Palace (Hua-ch’ing-kung 華清宮) Lasting-life Palace-hall was constructed, named Assembling-immortals Terrace (Chi-hsien-t’ai 集仙臺), it being used for sacrificial services to the gods.” Chi Yu-kung 計有功 (fl. ca. AD 1126), Background records of T’ang poems (T’ang-shih chi-shih 唐詩紀事) and others have felt a fasting palace-hall to be an unseemly place for lovers’ whispered vows to have taken place. He says: “Flying-frost Palace-hall (Fei-shuang-tien 飛霜殿) was the sleeping palace-hall (Ch’in-tien 寢殿), and it was most wrong of Pai Chü-yi to associate his Lasting-woe with Lasting-life Palace-hall.” No doubt Emperor Dark-progenitor and Yang Most-prized-empress sometimes departed from propriety! And Pai Chü-yi was well placed for accurate information. The two lines of Pai’s poem concerned were a basic inspiration for Hung Sheng’s drama, set around the romance of Most-prized-empress Yang and Emperor Dark-progenitor, one of the three or four most celebrated of all Chinese dramas.
(ii) The title of this Wonder-play drama (Ch’uan-ch’i 傳奇) by Hung Sheng 洪昇 (1659 - 1704). Worm Cottage chats on arias (Yin-lu Ch’ȕ-t’an 螾廬曲談) says: “This play was first called Eaglewood Pavilion (Ch’en-hsiang t’ing 沉香亭). Later, the matter concerning Li Pai 李白 was removed, with the insertion of events and circumstances concerning Li Pi’s 李泌 (722-789) assisting Emperor Solemn-progenitor (Su-tsung 肅宗) [reigned 756-763] as his prime minister in the Restoration (Chung-hsing中興), changing its title to Dancing “Rainbow-skirt” (Wu Ni-ch’ang 舞霓裳). Later on, it added the various matters of the T’ang author’s novella about Most-prized-empress Yang’s (Yang Kui-fei 楊貴妃) [AD 718-AD 756] returning to Erigeron-chenopodium (P’eng-lai 蓬萊) paradise, and Shining August-emperor’s [Ming-huang 明皇, i.e. Emperor Dark-progenitor (Hsȕan-tsung 玄宗) [reigned 712 - 756] trip to the Moon Palace (Yȕeh-kung 月宮), specially concentrating on their hairpins-and-casket love destiny, its title now being changed to Lasting-life Palace-hall, being completed after ten or more years and three transformations of the draft. The play’s final name was based on lines from Pai Chü-yi’s 白居易 (772-846) poem Lasting-woe song (Ch’ang-hen ke 長恨歌), which ends with the lines:
Heaven endures and Earth lasts long,
but one day they’ll come to naught,
This love’s keen woe winds on and on,
with no term when it shall end.
2There is a biography of Hung Chi in Hummel, Arthur, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing period (1644 - 1912), Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943 - 1944., p. 375.
3Ch’uan-kai 傳概, “conveyance of the overall”, “resumé of the play”, “prologue”. Each Southern Play (nan-hsi 南戲). Each Wonder Play (ch’uan-ch’i 傳奇) drama generally had as its first act a prologue that addressed the audience directly, and hinted at the overall outline or salient features of the plot of the drama. The later term for this one-act prologue was chia-men 家門, which means literally something like “pedigree”, “credentials”, “background”. A surprisingly wide variety of other terms were also used: k’ai-ch’ang shih-mo 開場始末, “opening run-through”; chia-men shih-chung 家門始終, “background run-through”; piao-mu 標目, “points/aims and purposes”, “title itemisation”; chia-men yin-tzu 家門引子, “background introduction”; hsien-sheng 先聲, “harbinger”; k’ai-tsung, “basic purpose”; k’ai-ch’ang 開場, “opening of performance”; t’ung-lüeh 通略, “summary”; fu-mo k’ai-ch’ang副末開場, “assistant male-role opening of performance”; and so on.
Usually this prologue consisted of only one or two stanzas of arias, which briefly greet the audience and aquant them with the playwright’s motives and the spirit in which he hopes the play will be taken, and give a summary or hint of a summary of the plot. In the earliest known dramas, this prologue act was very lively indeed, but later, in the more literary dramas of the Ming dynasty, some of the theatrical feel declined. There were subsequent attempts to restore some of the theatrical liveliness to the prologue, and the present example does well for its building of dramatic anticipation.
4Ch’ing-ch’ang 情場, “field of Love”, “Love’s field”, the realm of Love, Love’s events.
5Lien-li 連理: Joined/Entwined Branches. Also found as lien-li chih 連理枝, “Twined/Joined/Intermingled Branches”. Lien-li basically refers to the stems or twigs or branches or trunks of two separate plants or trees growing joined together, making them as one, which was viewed in ancient times as an auspicious sign of good fortune. Fang Ch’iao 房喬 (579 - 648), Tsin history (Chin-shu 晉書) of the early 7th century has the words: “There were as many as a hundred one-horned animals and joined plants or trees that were regarded as splendid propitious signs.” Li Yen-shou 李延壽 (T’ang dynasty, 7th century AD), Southern history (Nan-shih 南史), says: “To the east and west of Fragrant-perfume Dulcimer-hall there was a pair of joined tangerine-trees, so they changed the name of the Hall to Joined-trees Hall (Lien-li-t’ang 連理堂).” That same author, Northern history (Pei-shih 北史), says: “When Liang Yen-kuang was Commissioner for Ch’i-chou, he administered government with great kindness and wisdom, and huge ears of grain and joined plants were produced within the borders of the region. The emperor approved of his ableness, and sent down an edict praising him.”
A poem by Emperor Direct-civility (Chien-wen-ti 簡文帝 (reigned 550 - 551) has the line: “In Yangtse South the cardamom grows with joined stems.” This term was used as an image for brothers, they being like branches grown from the same root, or thus joined. A poem attributed to Su Wu 蘇武 (140 BC - 60 BC) says: “Brothers are like trees with joined branches, and I’m of the same body as you.”
More specifically, the term lien-li or lien-li chih surely refers to the Love Trees/Yearning Trees (Hsiang-ssu-shu 相思樹), being used as a metaphor for a truly loving and life-and-death inseparable couple, and is reminiscent of Western stories about rose and columbine, as in such songs as Barbara Allen.
Kan Pao 干寶 (fl. ca. AD 317) has a story about Han P’ing 韓憑 and his wife: Prince K’ang of Sung‘s (Sung K’ang-wang 宋康王) Personal Edict Secretary, Han P’ing, married a Miss He (He-shih 何氏). As she was beautiful, the Prince snatched her from him by force, and, because of P’ing’s resentment over it, put him in prison, then sentenced him to be a Wall Dayman - a builder, repairer and guard of the state’s defensive walls. The wife, nee He, secretly sent P’ing a letter, couching it in nonsense words:
The rain floods on and on,
The river’s mighty and its waters deep.
When the sun goes out,
my heart will be fulfilled.
Before long, the Prince discovered the letter, and showed it to his entourage, but none of them was able to understand it, except the minister Su He 蘇賀.
“‘The rain floods on and on’,” he said in answer to the Prince’s query, “means that she yearns sorrowfully for him. ‘The river’s mighty and its waters deep’ refers to their being unable to have meetings with each other. And ‘When the sun goes out, my heart will be fulfilled’ says that she has resolved to die.”
Very soon afterwards, P’ing committed suicide. His wife secretly made the cloth of her dress rotten, and when the Prince took her up onto his palace terrace with him, she threw herself over the edge of the high terrace. His entourage tried to grab her, but her dress came away in their hands, and she went to her death. In her girdle she’d left a letter, which said: “Your Highness had the benefit of me when I was living, but now, for my own sake, I die. I pray that you will grant it for my corpse to be buried togethe
r with that of P’ing.”
Furious, the Prince refused to agree to this, and had their fellow-villagers bury them, with their tombs facing each other but well away from each other.
“You two, husband and wife, loved each other unendingly,” proclaimed the Prince. “So make your tombs join by your love, and I’ll not keep you apart!”
In less than a day, a great catalpa-tree had grown at the inner end of each of the two tombs. And in ten days the trees were so big in girth that one could only just get one’s arms around each. They bent their trunks over to one another, and their roots entwined below and their branches intermingled above. And what’s more, a pair of mandarin ducks, one duck and one drake, made their constant perch up in the trees, never leaving there, day or night. The people of Sung felt for them, and named the trees The Love Trees.”
Biographie of the remarkable (Lieh-yi chuan 列異傳) says: “When Prince K’ang of Sung buried Han P’ing and his wife, overnight Patterned-catalpa-tree(s) (wen-tzu 文梓) grew, and a mandarin-duck and mandarin-drake perched constantly on the branches of the tree(s), their voices moving people. One source says that they turned into butterflies.” A poem by Li He 李賀 (791 - 817) has the line: “On the dark-green tree, Han P’ing is kept,” which directly refers to a mandarin-duck, i.e. mandarin-drake, as Han P’ing.
Another account refers to other birds. Record of the remarkable for Beyond-the-Ranges (Ling-piao yi-lu 嶺表異錄) says: “The Han P’eng 韓朋 bird is of the wild-duck [fu 鳧] or seagull [yi 鷖] kind. They always fly in pairs, and float on brooks and river estuaries. Everywhere North of the Ranges (Ling-pei 嶺北) here are big-ducks [xi-ch’i 鸂鶒], mandarin-ducks [yuan-yāng鴛鴦] and herons [lu 鷺] [Nycticorax prasinosceles], but one never sees the Han P’eng bird. Han P’eng is the same as Han P’ing (韓凭).”
6 The playwright is probably thinking that they’re in contrast to the immortal lovers of this drama.
7 Ch’ing-shih 青史, Green Histories. The Ch’ing, “green”, refers to the green skin of bamboo. In the Chou and Han dynasties, books, including historical records, were written on bamboo slips/strips. The bamboo slip was scorched to make it “sweat”, and then its green skin was more easily removed, which made the remaining white bamboo surface easier to write on, and also protected against woodworm. The process being called sha-ch’ing 殺青, “whittling away the green”, such slips being called han-ch’ing 汗青, “sweated green”, and the term was extended to mean “book/tome of history”. The term han-chien 汗簡, “sweated bamboo-slips”, was also used, with the same meaning. It’s a euphemistic or poetic term used to mean: histories, classical ancient histories. Li Pai 李白 (701 - 762) composed a poem including the lines, “When the lofty singing of the scarlet fomes japonica fungus was over, the old fame was transmitted in the Green Histories.”
8 To have such ministers and sons was a commonly stated ideal in traditional Chinese society.
9 K’ung Ch’iu 孔丘 (551 BC - 479 BC), the first great published thinker, and single most important influence on Chinese civilisation. He was sometimes referred to as “The Master K’ung”, Chinese K’ung-fu-tzu 孔夫子, from which the Jesuits of recent ages called him “Confucius”.
10Shih-ching 詩經, lit. “Song-lyrics warp”, i.e. Songs classic, often translated as Book of odes. Confucius is widely considered to have edited it from an earlier version, reducing its size.
11 Cheng 鄭 (806 BC - 375 BC) and Wei 衛 (1024 BC - 209 BC) were two states that existed during the Chou dynasty. Their prevalent music was regarded as too popular and “lascivious”, and “the music of Cheng and Wei” became a byword for low-class, popular and naughty music, as opposed to the supposedly dignified and lofty court musical performances. In his purported editing of Songs classic, Confucius left songs from Cheng and Wei in the anthology, and this is here taken as a sign that he would have also approved of the popular-level music of this present drama.
2Kung and Chih are the names of two of the five notes of the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale. Here, they stand in for all the notes, and the lines refers to the playing of instrumental melodies.
13 Unofficial biography of Grand-truth (T’ai-chen wai-chuan 太真外傳), i.e. surely the following, an account of the romance depicted in this drama, written by Yȕeh Shih (930 - 1007), Unofficial biography of Yang Grand-truth (Yang T’ai-chen wai-chuan 楊太真外傳, but the shorter title could refer to stories in general about Yang Grand-truth (Yang T’ai-chen 楊太真), most widely known as Most-prized-empress Yang (Yang Kui-fei 楊貴妃.
14Ming-huang 明皇, Shining August-emperor. He was the Emperor Dark-progenitor (Hsȕan-tsung 玄宗, reigned 712 - 756), who was given the posthumous title (shih 諡) Perfect-Cosmic-true Great-sage Great-shining Filial August-emperor (Chih-tao Ta-sheng Ta-ming Hsiao Huang-ti 至道大聖大明孝皇帝), which was popularly shortened to Shining August-emperor. After a powerful military start, he later allowed his reign to be debauched through his love relationship with his Most-prized-empress, which, as we see in the play, led to the cracking of the T’ang dynasty empire. All the same, he presided over perhaps the highest period of Chinese civilisation, one that produced so many of China’s finest poets.
In drama, he’s sometimes referred to as Han-huang 漢皇, the “Han” emperor. His surname and personal name were Li Lung-chi 李隆基, and he lived 685 - 762. He was particularly noted to posterity as a patron of music, singing, and (purportedly) acting, and as the hero of one of the greatest romances of all the ages. He was the third son of Emperor Illustrious-progenitor (Jui-tsung 睿宗, reigned AD 684 and 710 - 712). At first enfiefed as Prince of Lin-tzu (Lin-tzu-wang 臨淄王), as a youth he was bold and warrior-like, and had strategic acumen, and when the Empress Wei (Wei-hou 韋后, Wei-shih 韋氏) and her accomplices assassinated Emperor Middle-progenitor (Chung-tsung 中宗, reigned AD 684 and 705 - 710), set up Emperor Died-too-young (Shang-ti 殤帝), and created chaos in the government, it was he who mobilised forces, quelled the rebellion, executed her, and ushered Illustrious-progenitor to the throne. He shortly succeeded him as his heir, and became emperor himself, having Yao Ch’ung 姚崇 (651 - 721) and Sung Ching 宋璟 (663 - 737) in succession as his prime ministers, and creating peace everywhere, the era being called “the good government of the Open-origin reign-period [K’ai-Yuan 開元, 713 - 741]”.
Later, when he took Yang Jade-bangle (Yang Yü-huan 楊玉環, Yang Grand-truth, i.e. Most-prized-empress Yang [Yang Kui-fei, AD 718 - AD 756]) as his favourite empress, and appointed such as Yang Kuo-chung 楊國忠 (AD - AD 756) and Li Lin-fu 李林甫 (AD - AD 752) his chief ministers, the government of China went daily from bad to worse. The part-Turkic general An Lu-shan 安祿山 (AD - AD 757) rebelled in AD 755, and the emperor fled to Shu 蜀, the region of present-day Szechwan. Once the rebellion had been quelled, he was replaced by Emperor Solemn-progenitor (Su-tsung 肅宗, reigned 756 - 763), and he himself was given the honorific title of Superior August-emperor/Sublime August-emperor (Shang-huang 上皇).
His forty-four-year reign was one of great contrasts, the early pro-active bold rule, the middle period that constituted one of the highest peaks of Chinese civilisation, and the final period of quite sudden decline, that wrecked T’ang China, and robbed it forever of its solid cohesion and self-confidence. It has been widely and convincingly held that his personal relationship with Yang Jade-bangle was at the root of the empire’s collapse. For his romance with her, and for his presiding over China’s supreme age of poetry, however, he is one of China’s most celebrated emperors, surely the most famous of all.
Pai Chü-yi 白居易 (772 - 846) wrote the most famous poem on the romance. Since, for one obvious reason, Pai was living under a T’ang emperor, it wouldn’t have been politic or permissible for him to use the term “T’ang emperor”, and, for another reason, if only an incidental one of the prime restriction, the distance in putative time no doubt allowed him greater creative relaxation, and he calls the emperor “Han emperor”. Everyone who heard or r
ead the poem in his days, though, would have immediately known whom he was talking about.
15 nien-hao 年號. This is an unsatisfactory equivalent of the term, which in early Chinese dynasties often designated only part of an emperor’s reign. An emperor could have one, two or more “reign-periods” during his reign.
16 T’ien-pao 天寶, Heaven-treasure, the name of a reign-period, 742 - 756.
17Fei-tzu 妃子, emperor’s female spouse, empress. This term, or more commonly Most-prized-empress (Kui-fei 貴妃, refers to Most-prized-empress Yang (Yang Kui-fei 楊貴妃), also called Empreror’s-spouse Yang (Yang Fei 楊妃), i.e. Yang Grand-truth (Yang T’ai-chen 楊太真, whose personal name (hsiao-tzu 小字 or ming 名) was Jade-bangle (Yü-huan 玉環). Of exceptional beauty and alert intelligence, a musical expert, and excelling at dancing, she first became the fei 妃, “(principal) queen/principal wife” of Longevity Prince Mao (Shou-wang Mao 壽王瑁), the eighteenth son of Emperor Dark-progenitor (Hsȕan-tsung 玄宗, reigned 712-756). Emperor Dark-progenitor later summoned her into his palace as a “lady mandarin” (nü-kuan 女官), giving her the title or cognomen Grand-truth (T’ai-chen 太真). Then he took her as his own wife, showing her great favours, and advancing her officially to be his Kui-fei 貴妃, “Most-prized-empress”. She is most often referred to later as Most-prized-empress (Yang Kui-fei).
When An Lu-shan 安祿山 (AD - AD 757) rebelled in AD 754, Emperor Dark-progenitor fled to the safety of the Szechwan region, Shu 蜀. But after only a little of the journey thither, when they reached Ma Wei’s Posting-station (Ma-wei-yi 馬嵬驛), the imperial army escorting him mutinied, refusing to go any further, and declaring that Most-prized-empress Yang’s cousin Yang Kuo-chung 楊國忠, who had taken advantage of his relationship with her to achieve the main governmental power, was primarily to blame for the rebellion. So the Emperor was forced to grant them the execution of Yang Kuo-chung, and to “bestow death upon” Most-prized-empress Yang to allow her to commit suicide. Among many other things, Most-prized-empress Yang was famed for her dancing of the Rainbow-skirt and feather-jacket (Ni-ch’ang yü-yi 霓裳羽衣) dance.
Appendices and Endnotes Page 11
