The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama
Page 1
THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF
YUAN DRAMA
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
EDITORIAL BOARD
WM. THEODORE DE BARY, CHAIR
Paul Anderer
Donald Keene
George A. Saliba
Haruo Shirane
Burton Watson
Wei Shang
THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF
YUAN DRAMA
C. T. HSIA, WAI-YEE LI, & GEORGE KAO
EDITORS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2014 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
EISBN: 978-0-231-53734-6
Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and Council for Cultural Affairs in the preparation of the publication of this book.
Columbia University Press thanks Mr. Zhang Dapeng for his contribution toward the publication of this book
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Columbia anthology of Yuan drama / edited by C. T. Hsia,
Wai-yee Li, and George Kao.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-12266-5 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-231-12267-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-231-53734-6 (e-book)
1. Chinese drama—Yuan dynasty, 1260–1368—Translations into English. I. Hsia, Chih-tsing, 1921–editor of compilation. II. Li, Wai-yee editor of compilation. III. Kao, George, 1912–2008 editor of compilation.
PL2658.E5C85 2014
895.1′24408—dc23
2013030067
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.
Cover image: © flyinglife
Cover and book design: Lisa Hamm
TO THE MEMORY OF C. T. HSIA
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
HISTORICAL PLAYS
1. Ji Junxiang, The Zhao Orphan
PI-TWAN HUANG AND WAI-YEE LI
The Zhao Orphan in Yuan Editions
WAI-YEE LI
2. Anonymous, Tricking Kuai Tong
WAI-YEE LI
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
3. Anonymous, Selling Rice in Chenzhou
RICHARD C. HESSNEY
4. Meng Hanqing, The Moheluo Doll
JONATHAN CHAVES
FOLLY AND CONSEQUENCES
5. Qin Jianfu, The Eastern Hall Elder
ROBERT E. HEGEL AND WAI-YEE LI
6. Li Zhifu, The Tiger Head Plaque
YORAM SZEKELY, C. T. HSIA, WAI-YEE LI, AND GEORGE KAO
FEMALE AGENCY
7. Guan Hanqing, Rescuing a Sister
GEORGE KAO AND WAI-YEE LI
8. Shi Junbao, Qiu Hu Tries to Seduce His Wife
JAMES M. HARGETT, JOHN COLEMAN, KUAN-FOOK LAI, GLORIA SHEN, AND WANG MING
ROMANTIC LOVE
9. Bai Pu, On Horseback and Over the Garden Wall
JEROME CAVANAUGH AND WAI-YEE LI
10. Li Haogu, Scholar Zhang Boils the Sea
ALLEN A. ZIMMERMAN
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
C. T. Hsia and George Kao started this project many years ago, when the study of Yuan drama was still a nascent field in the American academy. Their goal was to introduce readers to fascinating works that should claim their rightful place in world theater and world literature. George Kao passed away in 2008. C. T. Hsia invited me to revise and edit this volume in 2011. Earlier versions of two of the plays, The Zhao Orphan and Rescuing a Sister, were published in Renditions, and we thank Renditions for allowing their use as base texts for revisions. In the midst of a demanding schedule in fall 2011, Mrs. Della Hsia turned these published materials into electronic files to facilitate editing, for which we are grateful. We thank Wilt Idema for his excellent advice on an earlier draft of this introduction and Linda Feng for her comments on four of the plays included in this volume. We are also much indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful suggestions. Mike Ashby’s attention to consistency and clarity greatly improved this volume. It was a pleasure to work with such a patient and meticulous editor.
Wai-yee Li
INTRODUCTION
WAI-YEE LI
This volume is designed to introduce the reader to the first great flowering of drama in the Chinese tradition. The plays translated here are conventionally referred to as northern drama or Yuan drama, a period designation that ties them to the dynasty of Mongol rulers who conquered northern China (then under Jin, or Jurchen, rule) in 1234 and southern China (Southern Song) in 1276 and ruled until 1368. As is often the case, literary developments do not tally neatly with political turning points. Plays of this kind were already flourishing by the mid-thirteenth century (before Kublai Khan proclaimed the founding of the Great Yuan dynasty in 1271), and they continued to be written in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Many of the so-called Yuan plays are preserved in much later redactions, and one may legitimately ask whether changes introduced by fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century editors permit us to still think of the resultant texts as being embedded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Textual “sedimentation” forces us to go beyond a simple either-or stance in considering the issue of authenticity. Instead of dismissing a Ming edition of a Yuan text as “inauthentic,” it is probably more useful to think of it as a composite Yuan-Ming creation that contains both Yuan elements and Ming editorial changes.1
Yuan drama is now recognized as one of the great achievements of Chinese vernacular literature. By turn lyrical and earthy (even vulgar), sentimental and ironic, Yuan drama commands an emotional and linguistic range that should earn it a rightful place in world theater and world literature. Combining sung arias, declaimed verses, doggerels, dialogues, mime, jokes, and probably acrobatic feats, it was a vital part of the culture of performance and entertainment in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.2 It provides a repertoire of stories and themes that are continually reworked in later periods, including revival in different media in our own times. Its broad canvas presents characters ranging from high to low, encompassing immortals, gods, rulers, ministers, warriors, strategists, judges, scholars, merchants, beggars, wives, mothers, maids, servants, prostitutes, wastrels, monks, and nuns, to name only some examples. There are recurrent topoi, such as historical legends of vengeance and requital, romances of rulers and consorts, heroism and betrayal at moments of dynastic founding or political crisis, power struggles between historical personages, miscarriage of justice in the court rectified by sagacious judges, banished immortals or humans that attain enlightenment, recluses insistently uninterested in power, romantic encounters of young lovers who eventually overcome all odds, family conflicts that beg for resolution, or wastrels who learn their lessons. The sampling in this volume, though by no means exhaustive, introduces readers to some common story types.
Our plays are called zaju 雜劇 (literally, “mixed performance” or “miscellaneous performance”) in Chinese. The term appeared as early as the ninth century, but its usage seems not to have become common until the Song dynasty (960–1279), when it was applied to skits, mime, puppet theater, and other types of musical or acrobatic performance.
A shared term is, of course, not evidence of genealogy. Literary historians believe, however, that the dramatic forms presented here have their origins and prehistory in various modes of storytelling, musical performance, and theatrical skits that flourished from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. Especially pertinent are the “play texts” (yuanben 院本) and narrative song suites called all keys and modes (zhu gongdiao 諸宮調) that developed in northern China when it was under Jurchen rule (1115–1234).3 Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀 (b. 1316) mentions in his miscellany Respite from Farming (Chuogeng lu 輟耕錄) that there are 690 play texts known by titles; unfortunately, none of these is extant. We do have one text in all keys and modes that has survived in its entirety: Dong Jieyuan’s 董解元 (ca. 1200) retelling of Yuan Zhen’s 元稹 (779–831) “Yingying’s Story” (Yingying zhuan 鶯鶯傳) in The Western Chamber by Master Dong (Dong Jieyuan Xixiang ji 董解元西廂記), which gives a happy ending to a love story that originally ended with abandonment.4 Dong’s text later spawned The Western Chamber (Xixiang ji 西廂記) by Wang Shifu 王實甫 (ca. 1250–1300), one of the most famous romantic plays in the Chinese tradition.5 The relationship between the texts by Dong and Wang gives us a tantalizing glimpse into what might have been vibrant interactions between musical storytelling and the theatrical stage.
There are musical differences between texts in all keys and modes and northern drama.6 Some of these divergences are observable in print, but the actual music of both is long lost. What remains is the music of the words, the rhythm, rhymes, and sonorous musicality of the arias, which we can still experience to a certain extent when we recite or chant them (even if we cannot sing them) in modern dialects. The Treatise on Singing (Changlun 唱論, ca. early fourteenth century) by Yannan Zhi’an 燕南芝庵 characterizes the mood associated with various modes; for example, xianlü mode 仙呂調, “fresh and lingering”; nanlü mode 南呂宮, “lamenting and grieving”; zhonglü mode 中呂宮, “high and low notes chasing one another”; huangzhong mode 黃鐘宮, “lush and filled with longing”; zheng mode 正宮, “melancholy and heroic”; double-tune mode 雙調, “strong, brisk, and stirring”; Yue tunes mode 越調, “descriptive and cynical.”7
The basic organizational component of each act in northern drama is the song suite, in which all arias follow one mode (gongdiao 宮調) and one rhyme. Thus xianlü mode “Touching Up Red Lips” (Dian Jiangchun 點絳唇) indicates “an aria in the xianlü mode to the tune ‘Touching Up Red Lips.’” The mode is mentioned only with the first aria; it is understood that all subsequent tunes in the same act follow the same mode. Although translations of the tune titles are provided in this volume, the correlation of their semantic meanings and musical properties is not well understood. In some specific cases, the tune titles indicate structural or sequential functions. Thus yao 么 (or yaopian 么篇) means “same tune as above”; shawei 煞尾 (or zhuansha 賺煞, zhuanshawei 賺煞尾, zhuanwei 賺尾, weisheng 尾聲, yuanyang sha 鴛鴦煞) indicates the last aria of the act, or “coda”; ersha 二煞 is “the aria before the coda” (“penultimate coda”); sansha 三煞 refers to “the third to last coda”; and gewei 隔尾 (“coda for the turning point”) has the same tune pattern as the coda but appears in the middle of the act where there is a change of mood or a plot twist.
The dialogues are secondary and probably improvisatory. In the earliest editions, the spoken parts are minimal and often indicated with the expression yunliao 云了 or yunzhu 云住 (after X has spoken)8 rather than spelled out, and there is no formal division into acts. A new song suite announces a new act, although the modes for song suites are not listed in these Yuan printings. The modern editors of Thirty Zaju Plays in Yuan Editions (Yuan kan zaju sanshi zhong 元刊雜劇三十種, hereafter Yuan Editions) have inserted the divisions into acts and the names of modes for song suites.9 Typically there are four acts. The five-act format in The Zhao Orphan is highly unusual (and the result of Ming editorial changes),10 and the five cycles of four acts each in The Western Chamber may be the only example of its kind.11 Some plays have “wedges” (xiezi 楔子), usually placed at the beginning but sometimes also between two acts. The metaphor is derived from carpentry and refers to the small piece of wood that fills a gap as two or more pieces of wood are fitted together. Unlike the prologue (jiamen 家門, fumo kaichang 副末開場) in later southern chuanqi 傳奇drama, the wedge is not separate from the plot and does not summarize the play or present the playwright’s perspective; rather, it is a short scene setting up the premise of the plot or facilitating its transitions. Its brevity means that instead of an entire song suite, only one or two arias will be performed, sometimes by roles other than the lead.12 The definition of the wedge was initially fluid. In the late fourteenth century, the first song was sometimes designated as the wedge, as in Zhu Quan’s 朱權 (1378–1448) A Formulary of Correct Sounds of an Era of Peace (Taihe zhengying pu 太和正音譜, hereafter Correct Sounds). Even as late as 1610, when Wang Jide 王驥德 (d. 1623) wrote Musical Principles (Qulü 曲律), the wedge was still defined in musical terms: “A performer’s first song upon coming on stage is called the ‘wedge’ in the north and the ‘lead-in’ in the south.”13 By the late Ming, however, the wedge was commonly accepted as the introductory or transitional short scene. Of the one hundred plays included in Zang Maoxun’s 臧懋循 (1550–1620) Anthology of Yuan Plays (Yuan qu xuan 元曲選, hereafter Anthology), sixty-nine have wedges. Yuan printings do not have the passages functioning as wedges marked as such; the designation seems to have begun in Ming editions of Yuan plays.14
The theatrical troupes performing in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries sometimes consisted of members of the same family or of teacher and disciples. There were court troupes (gongting xiban 宮廷戲班), “household entertainers” kept by rich families (jiayue 家樂), and, most commonly, independent troupes that lived in pleasure quarters or, more literally, “the courtyard of the entertainers’ guild” (hangyuan 行院). Classified as “debased” (jian 賤), these professional performers were subject to sumptuary and other restrictions.15 Actors specialized in specific role types, although there were also performers who could play both male and female roles.16 Our translation of the role types follows the system that Wilt Idema and Stephen West devised for Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals: Eleven Early Chinese Plays (hereafter Monks).17 The most important role is that of the lead singer, the male lead (zhengmo 正末) or the female lead (zhengdan 正旦), who determines whether a text is called a male text (moben 末本) or female text (danben 旦本). One actor sings throughout (with some exceptions in the wedge), although he or she may play different characters in one play. For example, in The Zhao Orphan, the male lead plays successively Han Jue, Gongsun Chuqiu, and Cheng Bo (Zhao Wu). In Selling Rice in Chenzhou, the male lead plays both the victim Zhang Piegu and Judge Bao. Scholar Zhang Boils the Sea is unusual in having both a female lead (playing the dragon princess Qionglian and the Hairy Maiden) and a male lead (playing the abbot Fayun) sing, although in another edition it is the Fairy Mother (played by the female lead) rather than Fayun who shows Zhang Yu the way to the sea in act 3, thus preserving the gender unity of a “female text.” The lead singer is the emotional focus of the play; the arias plumb lyrical depths, explore conflicting thoughts and feelings, and allow narratives to unfold. The role type that plays the adversary to the lead singer is the comic (jing 淨), a villainous character who often also performs farcical routines and nonsensical doggerels. This means that evil is never momentous: a figure like Macbeth, Iago, or Richard III would not be imaginable in these plays. More purely comical but sometimes also malevolent is the clown (chou 丑), a role type found only in late-Ming editions of Yuan plays; it is not mentioned in Zhu Quan’s Correct Sounds.18 Modifiers like “extra” (wai 外), “second” (er 二), “opening” (chong 冲), “painted” (cha 搽), “added” (tie 貼), “flowery” (hua 花), and “old” (lao 老) are variously applied to male (mo 末), female (dan 旦), and comic types and define a host of su
pplementary characters; for example, “the opening male,” who usually heralds action, the “added female,” who often plays maids, “the extra male,” who plays supplementary characters, and so on. In addition, there are names or stock appellations that function like role types, such as Meixiang 梅香 for maid, Zhang Qian 張千 for a yamen clerk or guard, Doctor Lu’s Rival (Sai Lu yi 賽盧醫) for a quack doctor, or Xiao’er of the Inn (Dian Xiao’er 店小二) for an innkeeper. Some terms for characters seem specific to dialect of the period and northern drama, such as bu’er 卜兒 (old woman), lai’er 倈兒 (child), or gu 孤 (official).
Not much is known about the authors of these plays. Names of authors are not included in the extant Yuan printings, and the authorial attributions in Ming editions are sometimes questionable. A major source of information is Zhong Sicheng’s 鍾嗣成 (ca. 1279–1360) The Register of Ghosts (Lugui bu 錄鬼簿, prefaces dated 1355, 1360, and 1366), whose entries are typically short and cryptic.19 Zhong notes in his preface (1360) that most of the playwrights were “of humble origins and did not hold high positions.”20 The activities of “talented writers of writing clubs” (shuhui cairen 書會才人) and joint efforts by a number of playwrights suggest collaboration that takes us beyond discrete textual boundaries and conventional notions of literati self-expression.21 Stephen West has noted that the categories of “notable gentlemen” (minggong 名公) and “talented writers” (cairen 才人) in The Register of Ghosts probably correspond to, respectively, “literati writers” and “professional writers.”22 The line between the two might in any case have been quite fluid. Although it is customary to assert that Yuan playwrights were far from the world of official power and privilege, we should note that some of them did hold office.23 Taking our cue from The Register of Ghosts, we can discern a shift from north to south in the regional distribution of playwrights from the early thirteenth century to the early fourteenth century.24