and the triumph of virtue. A rich merchant decides to take into his house
a second wife, a certain singing girl. He finds himself desperately in
love with this lady of easy virtue, while the girl herself is planning to
get his money in order to run off with her real lover. There is a scene
between husband and wife in which the latter bitterly resents the plan
of bringing a concubine into the house and pronounces grave warnings of
the evils that will befall her husband in consequence. But the merchant
persists in his plan and brings the singing girl to salute his wife as
mistress of the house. The former is required by etiquette to make
four bows, of which the last two must be returned by the wife. The wife
refuses to greet the interloper, and after a short but violent quarrel
she dies of anger. The next scene shows the singing girl stealing the
merchant’s money and setting his house on fire. Her lover, disguised as
a boatman, throws the husband into a stream and tries to strangle the
latter’s son and his nurse. But passers-by prevent the cowardly murder,
and one of the strangers buys from the nurse the seven-year-old boy for
one ounce of silver. The poor nurse faces starvation and decides to
adopt the profession of a singing girl. While traveling about in this
capacity she meets the merchant who has had a miraculous escape from
drowning and has sunk to the position of swineherd in a far country. His
lowly state eloquently points the moral. At first he upbraids the nurse
for having adopted her dishonorable calling, but afterward he accepts
her invitation to quit his miserable post and to be supported by her.
Thirteen years have passed and the young son has become a famous judge
by virtue of having passed a brilliant examination. He happens to arrive
in the same city where his relatives are and calls on the keeper of his
inn to provide some singers for his entertainment. The host leads in his
childhood nurse and his father. The young judge wipes his teacup with a
piece of paper which he throws on the floor. As this paper happens to be
the contract of his sale by the nurse to the kind-hearted stranger who
later made him his heir and as it happens to be picked up by the father,
a recognition is effected. At the same time two thieves are brought
before the judge, who turn out to be the erstwhile second wife and her
scoundrel lover. They meet their just punishment; the judge puts them to
death with his own hand as a pious offering to the spirit of his deceased
mother. The father praises the justice of Heaven and asks his son to
order a feast that they may celebrate in due form this remarkable meeting.
The chief interest of this clumsy play lies in the light it throws on
Chinese life. The indignation and subsequent death of the wife show how
even in countries where “they are used to it” women resent bitterly the
advent of a concubine into the house. During my stay in Peking there
occurred several weddings that were marred by violent quarrels between
the first wife and the new bride. The husband in our play vainly exhorts
his wife to be good, to observe the three obediences and the four virtues
of a wife.[12]
Yet he cannot exile her, because she has borne him a son. All of the
characters are drawn with great realism in their ignoble conduct. The
sale of the child by the nurse is followed by a tearful monologue on the
part of the sailor who had come to the rescue: “Poor child, your lot
is to be pitied. This woman who was just about to be strangled by the
brigands finds herself reduced to the necessity of selling her child.
Could one find a sadder and more heart-rending situation? Who would not
shed tears of pity for her?”
The author sets out with a realistic portrayal of a phase of life, but
he yields to the force of convention which required a moral and happy
ending—an influence not unknown in the drama of Western countries.
Our plays, from “The Merchant of Venice” to “Madam X”, abound in court
scenes, but the Chinese theater makes use of this effective device even
more frequently. A play called “The Chalk Circle” presents in a trial
scene a story almost identical with a Biblical one. Two women appearing
before a judge with a child each claim it as their own. The judge orders
the child placed in a circle drawn on the floor, while the women are to
decide who is the mother by pulling at the child in a sort of tug-of-war.
One woman refuses to hurt the child by pulling at his arm, and the judge
decides with Solomonic wisdom that she must be the true mother. Very
frequently these plays are satirical in character, making sport of the
notoriously corrupt judges. In one of the naively primitive speeches of
introduction, required by the theatrical convention of every character
on entering the stage, a judge is made to say, “I am the governor of
Ching-Chou. My name is Sou Shen. Although I fulfill the functions of a
judge, yet I do not know a single article of the code. I like only one
thing and that is money. By means of the bright metal every plaintiff can
always make sure the winning of his suit.”
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY A CHINESE ARTIST FOR “THE CHALK CIRCLE”]
“The Transmigration of You Hsin” is a play dealing with the popular
superstitions regarding the reincarnation of souls in much the same
spirit in which Voltaire in “Candide” treats the belief that this is the
best of all possible worlds. As in Gogol’s “Revizor” the government sends
an inspector to a certain village where the officials of the law court
are said to be corrupt. The rumor of the coming inspection reaches town
before the inspector; and most of the judges flee. Only You Hsin remains,
together with the clerks and minor officials. One of these expresses his
surprise at the fact that You Hsin is going to meet the inspector so
calmly, especially since he had recently accepted a scandalously large
bribe. You Hsin answers, “Yes, to be sure, I’ve accepted presents. But my
friend, you certainly are simple! Isn’t it necessary that we fulfill our
destiny? No one can die before his time has come. Have the courts ever
prolonged by one minute the life of a man? If it were otherwise people
would no longer believe in lucky and unlucky fates; they would no longer
call Heaven and Earth the arbiters of life and death.” A famous anchorite
appears prophesying that You Hsin will die within two hours. Then the
inspector enters the village and begins immediately his examination of
the court records. However, since he is an extremely stupid and incapable
man, the clerks succeed in persuading him that everything is in order.
But You Hsin in his home has fallen ill. He implores his beautiful wife
never to show her face in public and to remain a widow forever. He dies
at the very hour the holy man had foretold—even though his death is not
due to a sentence imposed on him because of his corrupt practices.
You Hsin’s soul appears before the judge of the lower world. As he had
been very avaricious in life his punishment is to consist in having to
gather coppers tossed into a deep kettle of boiling oil. But the holy
man appears and obtains forgiveness for You Hsin, because he allows
himself to be quickly converted to Taoism and makes the vows of poverty
and chastity. The judge will even grant him the boon of a speedy return
to earth. He cannot reënter his own body, because his wife has been a
bit precipitate in cremating it; but he is allowed to enter that of a
butcher who has just died, a blue-eyed, lame, and otherwise ugly man. The
butcher’s parents, wife, and neighbors are engaged in mourning, when the
dead man suddenly rises from his coffin. You Hsin wants, first of all, to
see his pretty wife, but when he tries to walk he stumbles with his lame
leg. As they hand him the crutch he reflects, “Ah, yes, in my former life
I had a crooked conscience and in this life I have a crooked and useless
leg. I realize only too well the heavenly justice!” The butcher’s
relatives follow him to his former home, where his wife had been happy
to receive him after he had fully explained his miraculous return. A
violent quarrel breaks out between the two women, each of whom claims
her husband. The case is taken before the stupid imperial inspector,
who is in great perplexity before the question as to whether the body
or the soul constitutes the husband. The case and the play end when the
anchorite arrives to remind You Hsin of his vows and to take him into the
unworldly wilderness.
Plautus’ and Molière’s subject for a comedy of character, the miser,
has been employed by a Chinese playwright with strong local color to
his humor. One of the many scenes of his play describes how the miser
comes to feel that he must have a son to pray at his grave and therefore
decides to buy one from an unlucky scholar reduced by poverty to selling
his children. He offers the parents one ounce of silver. The mother
exclaims in her disappointment, “Why, for that sum you couldn’t buy a boy
modeled in clay.” Perhaps this is a bit unmotherly in sentiment, but the
retort is truly miserly, “Yes, but a boy of clay does not eat or cause
other expenses.” When this sum is refused the miser instructs his servant
to go once more to the man, to hold the silver high, very high, above his
head and to say, “There, you poor scholar, His Excellency Lord Kou deigns
to give you one precious ounce of silver.” His servant replies that no
matter how high he holds it an ounce will be only an ounce; and finally
he pays the father more out of his own wages!
When the son has reached the age of twenty the miser scolds him one day
because he seems to think that money is for the purpose of buying food
and clothes! By way of instruction he tells how one can live economically:
“One day I felt inclined to eat roast duck and therefore I went to the
market to that shop which you know. They were just roasting a fine duck
and the delicious juice was running down. Under the pretext of bargaining
I handled it and soaked my fingers thoroughly in the gravy. Then I went
home without having bought it and called for a plate of boiled rice.
With each spoonful of rice I sucked one finger. At the fourth spoonful I
became tired and fell asleep. During my nap a treacherous dog came and
licked my last finger. When on awakening I noticed this theft, I became
so angry that I have been ill ever since.”
The house is in need of a picture of the god of luck, and the miser
instructs his son to order the artist to paint a rear view, because to
paint the face costs most. When he is about to die he orders his son to
bury him not in a coffin of pine, nor even of willow wood, but to use the
old watering trough standing in the back yard. The son objects that it
is too short, but the father instructs him to chop his body in two to
make it fit. “And there is one more important thing I wish to say to you
before I die; don’t use my good ax to cut me in two, but borrow one from
the neighbor.”
“Since we have an ax, why should I bother the neighbor?”
“Perhaps you don’t know that my bones are extremely hard, and that if
you’d use my good cutting edge you’d have to spend some coppers to get it
resharpened.”
The miser’s last words are inaudible, but he persists in holding up two
fingers. All the relatives assembled in the death chamber are very much
puzzled and try to please him by doing this or that, but the dying man’s
discomfort increases. Finally his old servant enters and he understands.
There are two candles burning where one might do; and after one of them
has been extinguished the miser dies in peace.
Tragedy is not found in the Chinese drama. The plays abound in sad
situations, but there is none that by its nobility or sublimity would
deserve to be called tragic. The closest approach to it is found perhaps
in “The Orphan of the Chao Family”,[13] made familiar to Western readers
by Voltaire; or in “The Sorrows of Han.” This latter play, in the
Chinese literally “Autumn in the House of Han”, is full of poetical
touches. North of the Great Wall there is the Tartar Khan who sees in
the weakness of the Han emperor his opportunity for further conquest.
This young emperor is addicted to a life of dissipation, and through his
minister Mao he gathers beauties for his harem from the four corners of
his realm. As a true Oriental, Mao demands a heavy bribe from the family
of every girl whose portrait he submits to the emperor. But the family of
the most beautiful girl of all is so poor as to be unable to pay a bribe,
and therefore the minister causes the artist to distort the portrait.
Naturally the emperor does not summon this lady into his presence. But
one evening, when in a melancholy mood he walks in an unfrequented part
of his palace grounds, he comes by chance upon this girl as she is
singing to her lute. Her beauty enchants him. “The very lantern shines
brighter in the presence of this maid,” he exclaims, and falls violently
in love with her. Of course, he orders the grasping minister to be
beheaded; but the latter flees to the Tartar Khan to show him a truthful
picture of the favorite and to incite him to war against China.
The Khan sends an ultimatum: “Either give me this beauty for a wife or
I will make war on China.” The emperor is aghast with fear of a Tartar
invasion, but the princess is willing to be sacrificed. “In return for
your bounties it is your handmaiden’s duty to brave death for you,” she
says and adds that surpassing beauty has always been coupled with great
sorrow, but that she will leave a name ever green in history. After a sad
farewell she departs for the country of the Tartars and meets the Khan
on the banks of the Amur. She drinks a last cup of wine to her lover:
“Emperor of Han, this life is ended. I await thee in the next.” With
these words the princess casts herself into the swift current and drowns
in spite of the Khan’s valiant effort to save her. He erects for her a
tomb on the bank of the river, which tradition says is green both summer
and winter. Moved by her noble character, the Tartar decides to live in
peace with China.
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY A CHINESE ARTIST. TOU-E BEFORE THE JUDGE]
A play that is even to-day a favorite in Peking playhouses under the
title of “Snow in June” was called by its Yuan dynasty author “The
Sufferings of Tou-E.” It is the record of the endless sufferings at the
hands of a pitch-black, wicked world of an innocent girl and her final
vindication through a triple miracle from Heaven. In her childhood she
was sold by her own father into a family where she became the son’s
wife and the drudge of her mother-in-law. For thirteen years she was a
dutiful wife and when her husband died she hoped to remain faithful to
his memory, as every widow in China is expected to do. But two cowardly
ruffians, father and son, force themselves into the house where she
is living with her likewise widowed mother-in-law and demand that the
women marry them, endowing them at the same time with all their worldly
goods. The two women refuse to yield to these insolent demands. Then
the younger intruder, or rather bandit, places some poison in a bowl of
soup, intending to murder the older woman, but his father drains the
cup by mistake. Hereupon he tries once more to coerce the heroine into
marriage by threatening to fasten the murder upon her. She feels quite
secure in her innocence and dares him to bring the case to court, very
certain in the belief that justice will prevail. But the wicked judge
begins by having the accused tortured, and this so brutally that the girl
is at last forced into a false confession merely to escape the unbearable
pain. Upon this she is promptly condemned to death. As she is kneeling
to be beheaded she announces that three things will prove her innocence;
her blood will not fall on the ground but on a banner ten feet above her
head; snow will fall although the season is summer; and there will be a
drought of three years’ duration. All of this comes true as it had been
foretold, and the strange tale is noised abroad in the land. Finally, a
just judge—her very father who as a poor scholar had been forced to sell
his child!—hears of the case and decides to investigate it. The spirit
of his daughter comes to enlighten him in regard to the true state of
affairs, and the real murderer is punished by being nailed to a wooden
ass and cut into a hundred and twenty pieces.
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION BY A CHINESE ARTIST. TOU-E ABOUT TO BE
BEHEADED]
This obtrusively moral ending is a _sine qua non_ in Chinese plays;
likewise the crude plot as well as the rôle played by accident rather mar
one’s enjoyment of the play. Yet the courage of the girl in the face of
her persecutors, her firm belief that justice will prevail in the end,
and her stoical manner of meeting death are elements not without their
charm. The scene of the execution is rather impressive in its simplicity.
Tou-E: (sings) Ye clouds that float in the air on my account,
make dark the sky! Ye winds that sigh because of my fate, come
down in storms! Oh, that Heaven would make my three predictions
come true!
Mother-in-law: Rest assured that snow will fall for six months,
and that a drought will afflict the country for three years.
Now, Tou-E, let your soul reveal clearly the great injustice
which is about to cause your death.
(The executioner strikes off Tou-E’s head).
The Judge (seized with terror): O Heavens! The snow is
beginning to fall! This is surely a miracle!
Executioner: I behead criminals every day and their blood
always flows on the ground, but the blood of Tou-E has spotted
the two banners of white silk and not a drop has fallen on the
ground. There is something supernatural about this catastrophe.
The Judge: This woman was truly innocent!
The plays discussed in this chapter are sufficient to show that in the
thirteenth century the Chinese possessed a theater of fair merit. To
be sure, the technique is extremely crude; characters on their first
appearance on the stage tell the audience their names followed by a
conscientious account of their past lives and the part to be played by
them in the drama; the motivation of the actions is very poor; many plays
seem to be dramatized narratives rather than real dramas; there is a
great paucity of invention as shown by the rather frequent repetition
of dramatic devices and motives; the necessity of having a moral ending
leads to numerous absurdities; and chance rules the playwright’s world
from beginning to end, always in the interest of the good. Furthermore,
there is lacking a real sense of the tragic; there are no sublime heroes
overcome by the universal human limitations which they challenge, nor
are there moral conflicts of an elevating nature in which poetic justice
triumphs. The characters are in general types rather than individuals,
and there is very little deep psychological insight displayed. And on the
whole it must be said, the plays do not rise to a very high spiritual
level. Yet there is great charm in this drama which brings on the stage
characters of all sorts from emperors down to coolies, and displays in
full the rich life in the Middle Kingdom of the days when Marco Polo
described it.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THREE
THE MING DYNASTY—1368-1644 THE PI-PA-CHI
The Yuan Dynasty of Mongol rulers was a very powerful one and extended
the Chinese frontiers to include Korea, Yünnan, Annam, and Burma.
The rulers proved themselves very tolerant of Chinese religions and
institutions; the emperor Jen Tsung even reëstablished the Hanlin Academy
and the official examinations. But though the government of these
foreigners was fairly efficient yet it was by no means popular, and
frequent rebellions occurred. Finally, the Chinese under the leadership
of a former Buddhist monk, Chu Yuan-chang, drove the Mongols beyond the
Great Wall and founded the Ming Dynasty. The ex-monk ascended the throne
in 1368 and is known in history as Emperor Hung Wu.
The Ming Dynasty is known as a period of prosperity in which industry
and commerce, as well as the arts of poetry and painting, flourished.
It was also a great period for the drama. Over six hundred Ming dramas
are still extant or are at least known by title, and many of them were
written by well-known authors of high literary standing and great
scholarship. The drama was so much appreciated at this time that many
high officials and wealthy families had private troupes of actors, a
large number of the dramas being specially written for these troupes.
Since the audiences were composed of the élite, the language of the
dramas could be of a highly literary character.
A development took place at this time that altered considerably the
form of the drama. Instead of the compact and unified three, four, or
five-act plays of the Yuan period, playwrights began to produce dramas of
thirty-two, forty, or even forty-eight acts. The name of this new form
is _ch’an ch’i_ (literally “novel”) in distinction to the _tsa ch’i_ of
the Yuan Dynasty. Doctor Hu Shih, writing to me about these two forms,
suggests that one might call the former “play” and the latter “drama.”
“Technically the new form seems to be a degradation,” he says, “but aside
from the aspect of literary economy the Ming dramas were superior to the
Yuan plays in many respects, viz. (1) profounder conception, (2) far
better characterization, (3) more even distribution of parts among the
characters. In the Yuan plays only one character had a ‘singing’ part
and the others were completely subordinated; while in Ming dramas the
rôles are more evenly balanced. In many cases the same theme was treated
by Yuan and Ming dramatists, and in most cases the Ming version is far
better.”
In this chapter I am presenting an example of this new variety of drama,
a 24-act piece called “Pi-Pa-Chi” (The Story of a Lute). Except for the
fact that dialogue and stage directions are used the work might well be
called a novel. Aside from the technical interest of the drama it is most
significant as a presentation of Confucian ideals, a revival of which
was typical likewise of the Ming Dynasty. Such ideals are embodied in
the family system with the selfishness—as it appears to us—of old age.
After reading about the adventures of the hero, Tsai Yung, the Westerner
can understand why in Confucian writings along with widows and orphans
there are enumerated “son-less fathers.” The conflict in the drama
centers about the “higher” and the “lower” obedience—service to the state
or to the family. But the problem is not a clear-cut one, as the son
is to serve the state in the interest of the greater prosperity of his
own family; nor can it be said that it is solved in any way. The drama,
however, is full of Chinese moralizing along lines far removed from the
thinking of the “practical” Westerner.
Indeed, much of the famous mystery of the East or the inscrutability
of the Orientals might be less baffling to the average American if he
were better acquainted with the literature of China. I have known, for
example, a young Chinese politician who was none too scrupulous in the
manner in which he went about earning his living, who drank, supported a
number of concubines, and in fact was what might be called by the vulgar
a “rounder.” In the course of a dinner one evening he told me between
the sharks’ fins and the Peking duck that he had been offered a post in
Washington, but, lucrative though it was, he could not accept it because
of “filial piety”—his very words. Now piety in any sense of the word was
the last thing I associated with this youth, and therefore his statement
seemed to me surprising. There was another Chinese, the owner of an
excellent stable, with whom I went riding frequently in the Temple of
Heaven. He was a vigorous young man, educated in Paris, very businesslike
and progressive in all his ideas. One day I received an invitation to
his wedding, and, on going, found a merry throng in the gaily decorated
courtyard, with dancing in European fashion going on in full blast. I
noted the groom among the dancers, congratulated him and remarked, “Well,
I’m sure you’re very happy to-day!” But he shook his head and, as tears
came into his eyes, he told me that the bride was not of his choice but
had been selected and forced on him by his elder brother, the head of
the family. Again, in speaking one day with a progressive young student
who talked a great deal about reforms in politics and who participated
eagerly in parades and other demonstrations staged for that end, I
mentioned a certain official who had flagrantly stolen funds collected
for the famine sufferers. The student expressed perfunctory disapproval
of the official’s conduct, but added, “Still, if I were in his position,
I’d probably do the same.” Such is the manner in which the Chinese act
and as such they show themselves in their literature.
“Pi Pa Chi” was written by an otherwise unknown author, Kao Tsi-ch’ing,
about the end of the fourteenth century. The first performance of the
play is known to have taken place in 1404, in the reign of Yung Loh,
the ruler who, as every tourist knows, has the most prominent monument
among the Tombs of the Ming Emperors north of Peking. The play is
typically Chinese inasmuch as the hero is not a warrior or a prince, but
a poor scholar who rises to fame through his knowledge of literature.
It abounds in sad situations and is praised by Chinese critics because
it makes the spectators or readers weep. Furthermore, it conforms to
the demand made on all Chinese dramas by being strictly ethical in its
tendency. The moral lesson inculcated is that of the chief virtue of the
Chinese—veneration of parents. This is done with such devotion and force
that the play might well be called the Song of Songs of Filial Piety.