The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama
Page 3
6. See Xu Fuming, Yuandai zaju yishu, 7–8.
7. Yannan Zhi’an, Changlun, anthologized in Wei Fei and Wu Yuhua, Gudian xiqu meixue ziliao ji, 73.
8. This indicates that the lead has to wait for the speech of another character to finish.
9. The version used in this volume is Xu Qinjun, Xin jiao Yuan kan zaju sanshi zhong.
10. For other examples of zaju in five acts and in six acts, see Xu Fuming, Yuandai zaju yishu, 129.
11. Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記) by Yang Jingxian 楊景賢 (ca. 1345–ca. 1421) consists of six cycles of four acts each and features multiple singers. However, scholars dispute the dating of this play; some claim that it is a late sixteenth-century work. The Story of Mistress and Maid (Jiao Hong ji 嬌紅記) by Liu Dui 劉兌 (printed 1435) is made up of two cycles. The male lead sings most of the arias, but the female lead also sings.
12. For example, the “opening male” sings in the wedge in the plays presented in chap. 1 and chap. 3, this volume.
13. Wang Jide, Wang Jide qulü, 41.
14. Xu Fuming, Yuandai zaju yishu, 99–120.
15. Ibid., 73–98; Idema and West, Monks, xvii.
16. For example, several female performers in Houses of Pleasure (Qinglou ji 青樓集) are said to “excel both as male and female leads” (danmo shuangquan 旦末雙全); see Yu Weimin and Sun Rongrong, Lidai quhua huibian, 484, 485, 496.
17. See Idema and West, Monks, xviii.
18. The translation of the title follows Stephen West’s rendering in “Literature from the Late Jin to the Early Ming,” 624.
19. Ibid., 621. The version of Lugui bu used in this volume is Zhong Sicheng, Jiaoding Lugui bu sanzhong (hereafter Lugui bu).
20. Zhong Sicheng, Lugui bu, 55.
21. For Yellow Millet Dream (Huangliang meng 黃粱夢), for example, Zhong Sicheng names a different playwright for each act (ibid., 13). Multiple versions of the same story also qualify our notion of “original creation.” On the designation of certain plays as “later versions” (ciben 次本) in Lugui bu, see Sun Kaidi, Sun Kaidi ji, 321–26.
22. West translates minggong 名公 as “famous noble” (“Literature from the Late Jin to the Early Ming,” 621).
23. Of the eighty-two zaju writers included in The Register of Ghosts, forty-three held office, but mostly in the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. See Tian Tongxu, Yuan zaju tonglun, 1:134–35.
24. Wang Guowei, Song Yuan xiqu shi, 76–77.
25. Shen Defu, Wanli yehuo bian 25.648.
26. The edition used in this volume is Zang Maoxun, Yuan qu xuan jiaozhu (hereafter YQX).
27. See Yong Rong et al., Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 199.4469; Wang Guowei, Song Yuan xiqu shi, 79. Wang’s book was completed in 1913 under the title A Study of Drama During the Song and Yuan Dynasties (Song Yuan xiqu kao 宋元戲曲考).
28. West, “Literature from the Late Jin to the Early Ming,” 560.
29. Zhu Jing, “Qinglou ji xu” 青樓集序, in Yu and Sun, Lidai quhua huibian, 466.
30. See West, “Interpretation of a Dream.”
31. Zhang Zhijiang, Zhang Qiang, and Jiang Jian, Wanjia sanqu, 7–10; for an English translation, see Idema and West, Monks, xii–xv.
32. See Hu Ji, Song Jin zaju kao, 311–26.
33. This play is translated in Idema and West, Monks, 283–313.
34. For translations of this play, see William Dolby, Grandee’s Son Takes the Wrong Career, in Eight Chinese Plays; Wilt L. Idema and Stephen H. West, A Playboy from a Noble House Opts for the Wrong Career, in Idema and West, Chinese Theater.
35. Mote, Imperial China, 282.
36. For example, Zhou Deqing 周德清 (1277–1365) characterizes the themes of Yuan plays as “loyalty” and “filial piety” (preface to Phonetics of the Central Plains [Zhongyuan yinyun zixu 中原音韻自序]). Xia Tingzhi (fourteenth century) argues that while Jin play texts were merely farcical skits, Yuan zaju plays “confirm normative human relationships and improve mores” (preface to his Houses of Pleasure [“Qinglou ji xu” 青樓集序]). Zhu Youdun 朱有敦 (1379–1439) maintains that zaju, just like the Classic of Poetry (Shijing 詩經), can “arouse edifying emotions, yield insights into mores, form ties in communities, provide the venue for expressing discontent” (“On the Autumn Scene in White Crane” [Baihezi yong qiujing xiaoyin 白鶴子詠秋景小引]). See Wei Fei and Wu Yuhua, Gudian xiqu meixue ziliao ji, 61–62, 65, 82–83.
37. He Liangjun, “Qu lun” 曲論, in Wei Fei and Wu Yuhua, Gudian xiqu meixue ziliao ji, 98. “Garlic and cheese” are associated with northern or specifically Mongol taste; see Luo Sining, Yuan zaju he Yuandai minsu wenhua, 79.
38. He Liangjun, “Qu lun,” in Wei Fei and Wu Yuhua, Gudian xiqu meixue ziliao ji, 87. He Liangjun said that he owned about three hundred Yuan plays in manuscript form. The term bense has multiple applications in different genres and also commands a wide semantic range in drama criticism. Gu Ying 顧瑛 (1310–1369) used it to mean semantic and musical precision; Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521–1593) linked it to language proper to the role. See Wei Fei and Wu Yuhua, Gudian xiqu meixue ziliao ji, 74, 102. See also Gong Pengcheng’s discussion of the term in Shishi, bense yu miaowu.
39. Zang Maoxun, prefaces to Anthology, in YQX, 1:1, 11–12.
40. Wang Guowei, Song Yuan xiqu shi, 101–2. It is also ironic that Wang’s opinion is based on the somewhat more polished diction of Anthology. Wang Guowei did get to know about the Yuan printings in the 1920s, but only after he had finished his book.
41. See Fu Xihua, Yuandai zaju quanmu.
42. Li Kaixian, “Nanbei chake ci xu” 南北插科詞序, in Li Kaixian quanji, 320.
43. This number includes the plays found in Anthology; Sui Shusen, Extra Texts Not Included in the Anthology of Yuan Plays (Yuan qu xuan waibian); and Zhao Jingshen, Lost Fragments of Zaju Plays by Yuan Authors (Yuanren zaju gouchen). See Tian Tongxu, Yuan zaju tonglun, 1:170–72.
44. See Yan Dunyi, Yuan ju zhen yi.
45. See Ning Zongyi et al., Yuan zaju yanjiu gaishu, 325–34. Some of these titles also include Ming plays.
46. These texts were already grouped together when they were in the possession of Li Kaixian, Huang Pilie 黃丕烈 (1763–1825), and Luo Zhenyu 羅振玉 (1866–1940). Scholars have suggested that these Yuan texts might have been meant for the use of the actors or the audience. Wilt Idema (“Traditional Dramatic Literature”) believes that these are “role texts” providing the male or female lead with their own songs, their own lines or cue lines. See also Luo Sining, Yuan zaju he Yuan dai minsu wenhua, 9–11.
47. Yuyang Xianshi (Immortal Scribe of Yuyang) was the sobriquet of two Ming playwrights, Wang Jide (d. 1623) and Chen Yujiao 陳與郊 (1544–1611), and it is also possible that book merchants made up this attribution (Idema and West, Monks, xvii). A note at the end of one play in this collection is signed “Woodcutter of the Western Mountain” (Xishan Qiaozhe 西山樵者), and the publisher is identified as the Xu family of Longfeng; see Zheng Zhenduo, “Ba Maiwang guan,” 373.
48. On its discovery and significance, see Zheng Zhenduo, “Ba Maiwang guan.”
49. See Li Kaixian, Li Kaixian quanji, 3:1699–1808. Li’s Revised Plays of Yuan Masters (Gaiding Yuan xian chuanqi 改訂元賢傳奇) had included sixteen plays.
50. See Ye Tang, Nashuying quhua zhengji 納書楹曲話正集, cited in Zhang Yuezhong, Yuan qu tong rong, 1157; Wu Mei, Gu qu zhu tan, 92; Zheng Zhenduo, Xidi shu ba, 197; Sun Kaidi, Yeshi yuan gujin zaju kao; Idema and West, Monks, xxviii–xxxi.
51. Late-Ming connoisseurs of drama, including Wang Jide, Xu Fuzuo 徐復祚 (b. 1560), and Ling Mengchu 凌濛初 (1580–1644), praised Zang’s anthology. Meng Chengshun, in Anthology of Famous Plays Past and Present (Gujin mingju hexuan 古今名劇合選), includes fifty-seven comments explaining why he followed Zang’s version or deviated from it, conveying a mixture of approbation and criticism. Scholars like Wang Guowei, Wang Jilie 王季烈 (1873–1952), Aoki Masaru 青木正兒 (1887–1964), Yoshikawa Kōji
rō 吉川幸次郎 (1904–1980), and Xu Shuofang (1924–2007) all upheld the merits of Zang’s anthology. See Tian Tongxu, Yuan zaju tonglun, 1:174–81; Xu Shuofang, Xu Shuofang ji, 3–64.
52. Altogether there are fifteen plays that exist only in Anthology. See Xu Shuofang, Xu Shuofang ji, 1:33–34.
HISTORICAL PLAYS
1
THE ZHAO ORPHAN
BY JI JUNXIANG
TRANSLATED BY PI-TWAN HUANG AND WAI-YEE LI
INTRODUCTION
WAI-YEE LI
The earliest extant accounts of the historic Zhao lineage in Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan 左傳, ca. fourth century B.C.E), Discourses of the States (Guoyu 國語, ca. fourth century B.C.E.), Gongyang Tradition (Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳, ca. third to second centuries B.C.E.), and Guliang Tradition (Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳, ca. third to second centuries B.C.E.) make no mention of the massacre and revenge that constitute the harrowing story of this play.1 Zuozhuan tells of the enmity between Lord Ling of Jin (r. 620–607 B.C.E.) and the Jin minister Zhao Dun (d. ca. 602), raises the question of Zhao Dun’s role in Lord Ling’s assassination, and chronicles the calamity that overtakes Zhao Dun’s brothers (583 B.C.E.) as a result of conflicts among them and power struggles between the Zhao and other ministerial lineages (Luan and Xi) in Jin.2 The story of the Zhao clan’s victimization and rehabilitation is told in Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (ca. 145–ca. 86 B.C.E.) Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史記): in this account Tu Angu 屠岸賈, as overseer of punishment (his title is “marshal” in the play),3 punishes the Zhao clan because of Zhao Dun’s role in Lord Ling’s murder and brings about its near extermination in the third year (597 B.C.E.) of the reign of Lord Jing of Jin (r. 599–581 B.C.E.), and the surviving Zhao heir achieves his revenge fifteen years later (584 B.C.E.).4 The heir’s escape and vengeance are achieved through the help of Han Jue and the sacrifice of an unnamed baby (not Cheng Ying’s son), Gongsun Chujiu, and Cheng Ying. Cheng commits suicide after the extermination of Tu Angu’s clan “to repay the dead” (xiabao 下報); that is, he has to die to demonstrate that he is not benefiting from Gongsun Chujiu’s martyrdom.
In The Great Revenge of the Zhao Orphan (Zhaoshi gu’er da baochou 趙氏孤兒大報仇),5 or, abbreviated, The Zhao Orphan (Zhaoshi gu’er), Ji Junxiang 紀君祥6 (ca. late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries) takes great liberties with the historical materials. He leaves out Lord Ling’s assassination and sets the whole play during Lord Ling’s reign. (The last act added in the Anthology takes place during the reign of Lord Dao [r. 573–558 B.C.E.]). He enlarges the role of the marshal Tu Angu as the archvillain and the mortal enemy of the minister Zhao Dun. Our play sharpens the contrast between Tu Angu’s heinous deeds and the heroism of friends and retainers loyal to the Zhao lineage, who commit various acts of supreme self-sacrifice so that its sole surviving heir may live. The keyword is bao 報, which means “to pay back” and includes both vengeance and requital. The wrong done one’s family must be avenged, but the unwitting adoption of the orphan by the very man who has sought to exterminate him provides an ironic twist in the plot. Thus filial ties form a subtheme running through the play—the ties between the orphan and his progenitors, the orphan and his savior and foster father Cheng Ying (who switches to calling the orphan Young Master after his identity is revealed), and the orphan and his putative father, who turns out to be the target of his revenge. Ultimately, vengeance as filial obligation trumps all other possible emotional ties (including filial affection), and the Zhao Orphan feels not the slightest compunction in turning against Tu Angu, who has raised him as a son. To the modern reader the absence of psychological conflict can seem jarring. The justice of the cause is never questioned, although the characters who are called upon to sacrifice their own or themselves under its aegis have moments of torment and self-doubt.
The moral equation defining the imperative of vengeance also urges requital for beneficence or trust. For a meal bestowed in kindness when he is starving, Ling Zhe performs superhuman feats of bravery to save Zhao Dun. Cheng Ying gives up his own son because of the “extraordinary regard” he enjoys as Zhao Dun’s retainer.7 Han Jue pays with his own life to let the Zhao Orphan go because Zhao Dun “raised him to high office.” Recognizing great merit or lamenting grave injustice can also prompt self-sacrifice, as in the case of Chu Ni, the assassin sent to kill Zhao Dun and who is moved to commit suicide instead, or that of Gongsun Chujiu, who gives up his own life because he accepts the orphan’s future revenge as the ultimate just cause. Agency as expressed in the will to embrace sacrifice and martyrdom is what prompts Wang Guowei in 1913 to describe this play and The Injustice Done to Dou E (Dou E yuan 竇娥冤) as “having a tragic nature” more than other Yuan plays because “although these plays are interwoven with villains, the impetus to brave danger and death come from the will of the protagonists.”8
The Zhao Orphan is mentioned both in The Register of Ghosts and Zhu Quan’s Correct Sounds. The version of this play preserved in the Yuan Editions has four acts, two arias that would be turned into part of the wedge, and almost no spoken lines. The two extant Ming editions, one from Zang’s Anthology and one from Meng Chengshun’s Libation, contain five acts and a wedge, as distirict from the four-act format common to Yuan drama. (The two Ming editions are almost identical.) We are presenting here the versions from both the Anthology and the Yuan Editions.9 There are significant differences between these two versions. In the Yuan Editions, Tu Angu’s ambitions to usurp the Jin throne receive greater emphasis, and the Jin ruler is repeatedly excoriated for becoming a mere puppet of Tu’s. At the beginning of act 4, the Zhao Orphan, before his family history is revealed to him, declares his intention to assist his foster father, Tu Angu, in his plan to overthrow the Jin ruler. The Anthology edition tones down or deletes criticism of the Jin ruler and removes any suggestion that the Zhao Orphan, under other circumstances, could have become a usurper. The Yuan Editions version ends with the Zhao Orphan appealing to the Jin ruler for help, poised to undertake his revenge. The Anthology edition concludes with a fifth act, in which vengeance is accomplished and virtue is rewarded; order is restored through the Jin ruler’s edict and affirmed through the Zhao Orphan’s paean to the ruler’s justice. Wilt Idema has observed that “whereas the earlier version dramatizes a tale of revenge and counter-revenge of feuding clans, the later edition stresses the exclusive power of the state to settle such conflicts, not only in its added fifth act but also throughout the play.”10 One may add a slight qualification to this broadly accurate characterization: the arguably more raw energy of the Yuan version preserves the moral parameters of just vengeance, while the improved image of the Jin ruler does not quite suffice to contain the violence and logic of vengeance in the later play.
About the playwright Ji Junxiang we know very little beyond his provenance of Dadu. Six plays are listed under his name in The Register of Ghosts; The Zhao Orphan is the only extant one.11 This play is the first piece of Chinese dramatic literature to be introduced to the Western world. It was translated into French in 1731 by a Jesuit missionary, Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare (1666–1736), who included only the prose dialogues and omitted all the arias. He explained that the arias contain too many allusions that are hard to understand. Prémare’s play enjoyed great success and was subsequently adapted into English, Italian, and German.12 The best-known version is that of Voltaire (1694–1778), L’orphelin de la Chine, which was performed at the Comédie-Française and characterized as “the morals of Confucius in five acts.” The Ming chuanqi play Eight Righteous Ones (Ba yi ji 八義記) by Xu Yuan 徐元 (late sixteenth century), included in Mao Jin’s 毛晉 (1599–1659) Sixty Plays (Liushi zhong qu 六十種曲), is also based on the story of the Zhao Orphan’s revenge. Searching for the Orphan, Saving the Orphan (Sougu jiugu 搜孤救孤) continues to be one of the most popular set pieces on the stage of Beijing opera and other regional operatic traditions. This play was translated by Liu Jung-en in Six Yuan Plays (1972) and by Pi-twan Huang in Ren
ditions (1978). We are presenting a revised version of Huang’s earlier translation.
THE ZHAO ORPHAN
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Role type
Name, social role
COMIC
TU ANGU, the marshal
OPENING MALE
ZHAO SHUO, the prince consort
FEMALE LEAD
PRINCESS, ZHAO SHUO’s wife
EXTRA MALE
CHENG YING, a physician, ZHAO SHUO’s retainer
MALE LEAD
HAN JUE, a general under TU ANGU
MALE LEAD
GONGSUN CHUJIU, a retired counselor to Lord Ling of Jin
MALE LEAD
CHENG BO, ZHAO SHUO’s son, the Zhao Orphan
EXTRA MALE
WEI JIANG, minister of high rank
ZHANG QIAN
WEI JIANG’s guard
SOLDIERS
SERVANT BOY
MESSENGER
BABY
GUARDS
WEDGE
(COMIC dressed as TU ANGU enters, leading a couple of SOLDIERS.)
TU ANGU (recites:)
Though the man intends no harm to the tiger,
The tiger against the man does conspire.
A battle that is not now properly won
Will yield troubles when all’s said and done.
I am Tu Angu, marshal of the domain of Jin. My master Lord Ling13 is on the throne, and among his thousand officials he trusted only one civil minister, Zhao Dun, and one military commander—myself. What with the rift we suffered, I have long wanted to get rid of Zhao but never had the chance to lay my hands on him. The son of that Zhao Dun is called Zhao Shuo, he is the lord’s son-in-law. I did send a brave man, Chu Ni, armed with a dagger, to climb over the wall of the Zhao residence to assassinate him—who would have guessed that he would instead die by smashing himself against a tree! It turned out that Zhao Dun, while speeding the plow14 in the countryside, had once seen a starving man on the verge of death under a mulberry tree. Zhao Dun gave him wine and food and let him eat his fill. The man then departed without taking leave. Sometime later the Western Rong tribe sent as tribute a hound called the Divine Ao,15 which Lord Ling in turn bestowed upon me. When I got the hound, a plan to finish off Zhao Dun came to mind. I had the hound locked up in an empty room and let him go without food for a few days. Then I had a straw man set up in the back garden, dressed exactly like Zhao Dun—purple robe, jade belt, a pair of black boots, and an ivory tablet16 in its hands. Inside the straw figure were hung some sheep viscera. I took the hound out, ripped open the purple robe, and let him eat his fill. Afterward, I locked the dog up in the empty room and again starved him for a few days. This time when I let him out, he immediately sprang at the straw man and started biting. I again cut open the robe and let the dog devour what was inside. After repeating this experiment for about a hundred days, I figured the hound could do the job. I then went to have an audience with the lord and told His Lordship that a disloyal and unfilial person was plotting treason. Hearing this, the lord was furious and asked me who this man was. I answered that the Divine Ao from the Western Rong was endowed with supernatural powers and could sniff out the traitor. The lord was very pleased. He said, “During the times of the sage-kings Yao and Shun, there was an animal called xiezhi that would attack with its horn any miscreant.17 Who would expect that we also have a Divine Ao among us! Where is the hound now?” So I led the hound in, and Zhao Dun was then standing beside the lord’s seat wearing a purple robe and a jade belt. As soon as the hound caught sight of him, it pounced upon him and started to bite. Lord Ling said, “Tu Angu, let go of the dog. That’s the traitor right here!” I let the hound loose and it chased Zhao all around the hall. But this roused the ire of someone right there, the officer of the palace guards Ti Miming. With just one strike of his melon-shaped mallet, Ti knocked down the beast. Then, seizing the hound’s scalp with one hand and holding his jaw with the other, Ti rent the hound in two. Zhao Dun, who had fled from the court gate, looked for his carriage with its team of four horses. However, I had already had two of the horses taken away and one of the two wheels of the carriage removed. When Zhao Dun got into the carriage, it could not move. At this juncture a strong man sprang forth from the side. Steadying the carriage with one arm and lashing the horses with the other, he forged a path by overcoming every obstacle and managed to take Zhao to safety. Who do you think the man was? He was none other than Ling Zhe, that starving man under the mulberry tree.18 I then made my case with Lord Ling and had the entire Zhao clan eliminated—high and low, some three hundred men, women, and children in all. Now there’s only Zhao Shuo, who’s with the princess in the lord’s palace. As the lord’s son-in-law, he cannot be so easily put to death without proper procedure. As the saying goes, “Eradicate the root and there will be no sprouting”: I thus forged an edict in the name of the lord and sent a messenger to Zhao Shuo bearing the three gifts of death from the court: a bowstring, some poisoned wine, and a dagger.19 He is to choose one and commit suicide. I have instructed the messenger to waste no time on the road and come back quickly to report to me. (Recites:)