The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama

by C. T. Hsia

  The Ming scholar Shen Defu 沈德符 (1578–1642) maintained that drama flourished during the Yuan because Mongol rulers “used song writing to assess the merit of scholars” (yi qu qushi 以曲取士) during examinations.25 The same point is mentioned in Zang Maoxun’s preface to his Anthology.26 This theory was disparaged during the Qing and definitively rejected in Wang Guowei’s 王國維 (1877–1927) History of Drama During the Song and Yuan Dynasties (Song Yuan xiqu shi 宋元戲曲史, 1915).27 Also related to the civil service examination is the argument that its abeyance encouraged the literati to try their hand at writing plays. The civil service examination was not held from 1279 to 1314 and was again suspended from 1334 to 1340. When it was held, it was often merely local, open to abuses, and biased in favor of Mongols and Semu 色目(central and western Asians of the “various categories”). According to West, “Altogether only sixteen central examinations were held in the years 1314 to 1368, promoting only 1,139 successful candidates for the bureaucracy.”28 Discontent and political disaffection as the impetus for writing is a wonted theme in the Chinese tradition. In this context, frustrations are often linked to political corruption and the sentiments of those who remained loyal to the fallen regimes of Jin and Song. Such is the view articulated in Zhu Jing’s 朱經 1364 preface to Xia Tingzhi’s 夏庭芝 Houses of Pleasure (Qinglou ji 青樓集).29 According to Zhu, playwrights like Bai Pu 白樸 (b. 1226) and Guan Hanqing 關漢卿 (thirteenth century) were Jin loyalists who disdained participation in the Yuan political system, whose negative turn soon meant that “scholars lost their vocation and their will was thwarted.” Many literary histories rehearse the argument that Han Chinese literati, denied the venue for advancement, vented their frustration and disappointments by turning to the writing of plays. Twentieth-century studies tend to link such disaffection with pointed social critique; Yuan drama is often lauded for its fierce denunciation of flaws in the judicial system, official corruption, and other kinds of social injustice. Some members of the elite probably did feel deprived and humiliated in a discriminatory system, but did this cause them to turn to drama as the means for self-realization? If this causal connection did exist, did it also prompt heightened awareness of social ills?

  These are possible but by no means inevitable logical leaps. Perhaps much more immediate and palpable is the symbiosis between literate men writing plays and the flourishing urban culture in which the theater claimed a central place. The extant Yuan editions advertise their compilation or printing in Dadu (present-day Beijing) and Hangzhou, pointing to the ties between theatrical culture and urban centers. This connection reached back as far as the Northern Song, as attested by the description of the stage and entertainment quarters of Kaifeng in Meng Yuanlao’s 孟元老 Dreaming of Splendors Past: The Eastern Capital (Dongjing menghua lu 東京夢華錄), completed in 1147 and published forty years later.30 Recollections of thirteenth-century Hangzhou, such as Zhou Mi’s 周密 (1232–1298) The Bygone World of Hangzhou (Wulin jiushi 武林舊事, ca. 1290) and Wu Zimu’s 吳自牧 Record of Vain Dreams (Mengliang lu 夢梁錄, 1334), also depict a vibrant urban culture. The rich, sensuous texture of sights, sounds, and tastes of entertainment quarters and houses of pleasures is described in many thirteenth- and fourteenth-century songs and plays. In Du Renjie’s 杜仁傑 (thirteenth century) song suite “The Country Bumpkin Does Not Know the Theater” (Zhuangjia bushi goulan 莊家不識勾欄),31 the perspective of the country bumpkin defamiliarizes theatrical entertainment. In another instance, Gao Andao 高安道, in the voice of an official, superciliously mocks an inferior theatrical setup and performance in “Songs and Performance in the Pleasure Quarters” (Sang dan hangyuan 嗓淡行院) from the perch of social superiority.32 A few plays specifically dwell on the lure of the theatrical world. Immortals have a hard time convincing an actor to leave his troupe in the anonymous Zhongli of the Han Leads Lan Caihe to Enlightenment (Han Zhongli dutuo Lan Caihe 漢鍾離度脫藍采和, late thirteenth to early fourteenth century).33 There are also plays about young men of good family so enthralled with the theater that they join theatrical troupes, as in Love in the Purple Cloud Pavilion (Zhugongdiao fengyue Ziyun ting 諸宮調風月紫雲亭), attributed to Shi Junbao 石君寶 (thirteenth century), and the southern play A Playboy from an Official Family Takes the Wrong Career (Huanmen zidi cuo lishen 宦門子弟錯立身) by “A Talented Writer from Hangzhou” (Gu Hang Cairen 古杭才人, thirteenth century).34 F. M. Mote has concluded, “There is more reason to believe that they [writers of zaju] were drawn to the theater because it satisfyingly employed their talents than there is to believe that they were forced by demeaning circumstances to follow a lifestyle that they would otherwise have avoided.”35

  Zhong Sicheng writes in the 1330 preface to The Register of Ghosts,

  Alas! I too am a ghost. If I can turn the ghosts of the dead as well as the ghosts of the not yet dead into undying ghosts, so that their names can spread far, how fortunate I would be! As for the high-minded scholars and the learning about moral nature and principles, by whose standards I may be thought to have offended against the sages’ teachings, I can only, with those of like mind, eat clams and reserve my words for those who know the taste.

  Ghosts are less than human and yet more than human; they become so through Zhong’s elevation of half-forgotten “ghosts” to the realm of literary immortality. By the same logic, clams satisfy a humble palate but may be tastier than more expensive foods—in any case the like-minded who share their appreciation are already on their way to redefine taste. Ghosts and clams are apt metaphors for Yuan playwrights and their plays. As it happens, Zhong does stand between oblivion and immortality for these writers. Clams symbolize the unorthodox “tastiness” of northern drama; it is precisely because they “offend against the sages’ teachings” that they claim a special place in Chinese literary history. Even with the “damage control” of Ming editors who turn Yuan plays into “texts for reading,” we can still sense the subversive potential: Kuai Tong lamenting the fate of loyal ministers betrayed by ruthless rulers (Tricking Kuai Tong [Zhuan Kuai Tong 賺蒯通]); Judge Bao reveling in trickery and buffoonery as he solves a crime case (Selling Rice in Chenzhou [Chenzhou tiaomi 陳州糶米]); Shanshouma justifying a symbolic patricide (The Tiger Head Plaque [Hutou pai 虎頭牌]); Luo Meiying asserting “the principle of wifely authority” (qigang 妻綱) (Qiu Hu Tries to Seduce His Wife [Qiu Hu xi qi 秋胡戲妻]); Zhao Pan’er cynically deconstructing high-flown romance (Rescuing a Sister [Jiu fengchen 救風塵]); and Li Qianjin berating her weak husband and unfeeling father-in-law (On Horseback and Over the Garden Wall [Qiangtou mashang 牆頭馬上]), to name but a few examples from this volume, all test the limits of decorum, sociopolitical boundaries, and conventional moral premises despite professed adherence to orthodox principles. Zhong’s defiant adoption of the oppositional stance is all the more remarkable when we consider the numerous contemporary and later arguments defending drama on account of its supposed articulation of orthodox virtues and potential for moral edification.36

  Two centuries later the Ming scholar He Liangjun 何良俊 (1506–1573) continues the taste metaphor as he compares Gao Ming’s 高明 (ca. 1306–1359) Story of the Lute (Pipa ji 琵琶記) with Yuan drama:

  “Ten thousand miles of endless sky” is a fine poetic exposition; how can labels like lyrics or songs exhaust its merit! But since it is called a dramatic aria, it has to have garlic and cheese, and this aria has none of it. Just as in a feast of nobles and high officials, rich and elaborate food like camel hump or bear paws fills the space in front of them, and yet there are no vegetables, bamboo shoots, mussels, or clams. What is lacking is tastiness with character [fengwei 風味]!37

  He Liangjun also faults The Western Chamber and Story of the Lute for being “totally effeminate” (quan dai zhifen 全帶脂粉), in contrast to Yuan masters, whose natural and rough-hewn diction he characterizes as the “original color” or “natural color” (bense 本色) of the “professional playwright” (zu
ojia 作家).38 Despite some passing resemblance, the “garlic and cheese” metaphor is quite different from the “clam” metaphor. Here “tastiness” is more a matter of stylistic register. It is in the same spirit that Zang Maoxun praises Yuan drama for “achieving craft by being the opposite of crafted” (bu gong er gong 不功而功), an implicit corrective of what Zang perceives as the overrefinement of contemporary southern drama. For Zang the criterion of evaluation is “theatrical function” (danghang 當行), the affective power of a play achieved through compelling role-playing.39 As Yuan drama is assimilated into the great tradition, ideological challenges are tamed and transformed into (or at least understood as) aesthetic “roughness” or “naturalness.”

  “Naturalness” (ziran 自然) is also upheld as the prime virtue of Yuan plays in the first modern Chinese academic study of drama, The History of Drama During the Song and Yuan Dynasties by Wang Guowei. Wang maintains that Yuan playwrights “wrote by following where their inspiration took them—they did so to amuse themselves and others.”

  They just depicted the thoughts and feelings in their hearts and the ways things were in their era, and the truth of genuineness and conviction, as well as the spirit of beauty and distinction, often shone through. That is why it is not far off the mark to say that Yuan drama is the most natural literature in China. As for the naturalness of its language [wenzi 文字], that is just the inevitable consequence [of its spirit]—it is but a secondary point.40

  Wang argues that it is this “naturalness” that allows Yuan drama to transcend flaws of structure, characterization, and thought content (sixiang 思想). In other words, Wang is defining “naturalness” as a mode of uncensored and unmediated expression beyond considerations of ideology or style. In doing so he implicitly bypasses the dichotomy of form and content. By this logic it is emotional honesty that allows Yuan playwrights to go beyond the constraints of tradition or orthodoxy without deliberate ideological agenda or stylistic choice. It is also interesting that the defense of drama should be based on sincerity and genuineness, when the essence of acting is, after all, a kind of lying or make-believe.

  According to extant sources, we know of the names of about 200 playwrights and the titles of about 737 plays.41 The number that actually existed must have been much larger; as late as the mid-sixteenth century the poet, playwright, and theater connoisseur Li Kaixian 李開先(1502–1568) still had the chance to peruse about 1,750 zaju.42 We now have 207 extant “Yuan plays,” of which 45 exist as fragments.43 The quotation marks remind us that the category here includes a few early-Ming works and that these plays are, as mentioned, composite Yuan-Ming creations, although it is customary to refer to them as Yuan drama. Many anonymous plays cannot be dated with certainty, and some Ming plays might have masqueraded as Yuan plays by using their titles.44

  Most major extant collections of Yuan plays, some of which exist in multiple versions, are preserved in Plays in Early Editions (Guben xiqu congkan 古本戲曲叢刊), fourth series (1958).45 The following list gives the names of collections, names of compilers (if known), and the number of extant plays:

  1. Thirty Zaju Plays in Yuan Editions (Yuan kan zaju sanshi zhong 元刊雜劇三十種),46 30

  2. Copied and Collated Zaju Plays Past and Present from the Maiwang Studio (Maiwang guan chao jiao gujin zaju 脈望館抄校古今雜劇), Zhao Qimei 趙琦美 (1563–1624), 242

  3. Zaju by Ancient Masters (Gu mingjia zaju 古名家雜劇, 1588), Yuyang Xianshi 玉陽仙史,47 10

  4. Ancient Zaju (Gu zaju 古雜劇, 1588), Guquzhai 顧曲齋 printing, Wang Jide, 20

  5. Anthology of Zaju (Zaju xuan 雜劇選, 1598), Xijizi 息機子, 11

  6. Refined Music (Yangchun zou 陽春奏, 1609), Huang Zhengwei 黃正位, 3

  7. Zaju from the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Yuan Ming zaju 元明雜劇), 4

  8. Anthology of Famous Plays Past and Present (Gujin mingju hexuan 古今名劇合選, comprising Libation to the River [Leijiang ji 酹江集, hereafter Libation] and Willow Branch [Liuzhi ji 柳枝集]), 1633, Meng Chengshun 孟稱舜 (seventeenth century), 56

  The plays included in Yuan Editions are of different provenance, but they were already grouped together as a collection by the sixteenth century. The Maiwang Studio Collection, once larger, now includes 242 plays, of which 132 plays do not exist in other editions. It includes plays from printed editions, 54 from Zaju by Ancient Masters (hereafter Ancient Masters) and 15 from Anthology of Zaju (hereafter Xijizi). It also includes hand-copied manuscripts, 95 from the Ming imperial palace, 33 from the Ming book collector Yu Xiaogu 于小谷, and 44 of unknown provenance. This collection was in the possession of famous Qing collectors. Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸 (1898–1958) discovered it in Shanghai in 1938.48 Plays from Ancient Masters and Xijizi not included in the Maiwang Studio Collection are grouped by the editors of the 1958 series under the titles of no. 3 and no. 5.

  The Ming editions not found in the 1958 series are Li Kaixian’s Revised Plays by Yuan Masters (Gaiding Yuan xian chuanqi 改訂元賢傳奇), Tong Yeyun’s 童野雲 Selections of Yuan Plays (Yuanren zaju xuan 元人雜劇選), and Zang Maoxun’s Anthology, which includes one hundred plays. Six Yuan plays revised by Li Kaixian (ca. 1566) are incorporated in the modern edition of Li’s collected writings.49 Of the various Ming editions, the one that eventually became most influential is Zang Maoxun’s Anthology. Its ready availability explains its exclusion from the 1958 series. Zang’s editorial labor has invited criticism; both Wu Mei 吳梅 (1883–1939) and Zheng Zhenduo fault Zang for his cavalier “corrections” and quote with approval Ye Tang’s 葉堂 (eighteenth century) critique of him as a “rash fellow” (menglang han 孟浪漢). Sun Kaidi 孫楷第 (1902–1989) claims that Zang “willfully followed his judgments and made too many corrections.” Idema and West see Zang’s editorial effort as a deliberate “Confucianization” of Yuan plays.50 However, Zang’s Anthology has never lacked admirers and ardent defenders.51 It is hard to judge the extent of Zang’s editorial intervention because there are so many gaps in the genealogies and transmission of Yuan plays. We believe that Zang’s Anthology deserves attention, not least because of its tremendous influence. In some cases, the version in Zang’s anthology is more interesting and coherent than versions in other Ming editions. Some plays exist only in Anthology, as is the case with three plays in this volume.52 For the past four centuries, Chinese readers have enjoyed Yuan plays through this anthology. In The Story of the Stone (The Dream of the Red Chamber [Honglou meng 紅樓夢]) (chapter 42), the prim and proper Xue Baochai, even as she warns Lin Daiyu of the dangers of reading plays, confesses to having secretly read “the hundred Yuan plays” (Yuanren bai zhong 元人百種) as a child. Through Zang’s Anthology, Yuan drama became an integral part of the Chinese literary tradition. It is also through this collection that Yuan plays were first introduced to the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Liu Jung-en’s (1908–2001) Six Yuan Plays (1972) was based on Zang’s Anthology, but it was published more than forty years ago and leaves room for updating. By focusing its selection on Zang’s Anthology, this volume also complements recent endeavors in the translation of Yuan drama. Monks, for example, includes only one text from Anthology since Idema and West are more interested in using the earliest editions in order to reconstruct Yuan plays as scripts for performance. Zang Maoxun belonged to a generation of scholar-entrepreneurs who combined scholarly interests with business acumen. He edited the plays for reading with a view to making Anthology a profitable venture. We hope that these plays make for good reading for the general reader as well as students of Chinese literature.

  In an early draft of this volume, all the translations were based on Zang’s Anthology. In our revisions, we chose to use another Ming edition as the base text only in the case of Rescuing a Sister: since there are two good published translations of the play based on Anthology, it may be useful to highlight the more biting sarcasm of the version from Ancient Masters. For the translations based on Anthology, we explain signi
ficant textual variations in the notes. For the purpose of comparison, we have translated The Zhao Orphan from the Yuan Editions. Although it is customary to translate Chinese poetry as blank verse, in our revisions we have increased the use of rhymes whenever feasible in order to better convey the pathos or the comic potential. For example, the verse a character recites when he or she comes on stage is more often doggerel than poetry, and its effectiveness relies on rhyme. (Textual variants cited in the notes are also often rhymed in the original, but we have focused on semantic difference in such cases and have not tried to preserve the rhyme.)

  NOTES

  1. For Ming editorial changes in Yuan plays, see Idema, “Why You Have Never Read a Yuan Drama”; West, “Text and Ideology.”

  2. On theatrical culture in the period 1100–1450, see Idema and West, Chinese Theater.

  3. On Jurchen elements in Yuan drama, see the introduction to chap. 6, this volume, and Xu Shuofang, Xu Shuofang ji, 90–129.

  4. See Dong Jieyuan, Dong Jieyuan Xixiang ji; Ch’en Li-li, Master Tung’s Western Chamber Romance. Another two texts in “all keys and modes” exist as fragments: one on Liu Zhiyuan, the founder of the Later Han (947–950), one on the Tianbao era and the An Lushan Rebellion. For more on this genre, see Idema, “Data on the Chu-kung-tiao”; Idema, “Satire and Allegory”; West, Vaudeville and Narrative.

  5. See Wang Shifu, Jiping jiaozhu Xixiang ji; Idema and West, Story of the Western Wing.