The Columbia Anthology of Yuan Drama

C. T. Hsia, Wai-yee Li, George Kao, C. T. Hsia, Wai-yee Li, George Kao

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231537346
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

This anthology features translations of ten seminal plays written during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), a period considered the golden age of Chinese theater. By turns lyrical and earthy, sentimental and ironic, Yuan drama spans a broad emotional, linguistic, and stylistic range. Combining sung arias with declaimed verses and doggerels, dialogues and mime, and jokes and acrobatic feats, Yuan drama formed a vital part of China's culture of performance and entertainment in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

To date, few Yuan-dynasty plays have been translated into English. Well-known translators and scholars have supervised the making of this collection and add a short description to each play. A general introduction situates all selections within their cultural and historical contexts.

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 sign...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Historical Plays
• Crime and Punishment
• Folly and Consequences
• Female Agency
• Romantic Love
• Bibliography
• Series List