The rise of the Chinese drama was due to a national disaster that broke the sway of the ruling literary class. In 1264 Kublai Khan with his Mongols fixed his capital at Peking and for the first time in their history the sons of Han passed under the rule of an alien sovereign. The barbarians naturally enough abolished the literary examinations for government posts, consisting of competitions in the writing of essays and poetry in the language of the classics, for they did not care to appoint as viceroys and justices members of the subject race. The Mongol language had absolutely no literature and, indeed, not even an alphabet until 1279, when a Tibetan priest constructed one by imperial order. Chinese scholars were thrust out of their high offices and could find employment only as writers of petitions or as lowly clerks. There was no longer any call for the exercise of their talents in the writing of descriptive essays or lyrical poetry such as had been demanded in the examinations formerly leading to the highest offices; they found, however, a fruitful outlet for their literary powers in a genre previously greatly despised by the literati—the drama.

The cause of the scholar’s disdain for the drama and the novel was the great chasm that yawned between the classical language and the spoken language of the day in which, perforce, popular literature of entertainment or of the stage had to be written. For over a thousand years the literary language had been a dead language, so dead that a learned scholar could comprehend it only if he saw the text in black and white before his eyes—to hear it read did not by any means enable him to understand it. Everything that had been considered literature up to that time was composed in this language, and anything composed in the vulgar tongue was considered beneath the dignity of a scholar. Now, however, clever writers turned to the drama and the novel with the result that the written language was to a certain extent democratized in the works that appealed to the broad masses of readers or hearers. But let it be noted, to a certain extent only; for, as vanquished Greece in turn conquered Rome by her superior culture, so Chinese culture conquered the Mongols. After having been abolished for practically eighty years the literary examinations were reinstated and the drama too was gradually caught in pedantic fetters of formalism. Yet in spite of the fact that the Yuan dramatists moved away from the spoken language to one presupposing considerable erudition on the part of the reader, there are many scholars even to-day who regard the novel and drama as beneath their notice, just as a medieval scholar would have despised any work not written in Latin.[10]

In fact these works have been recognized at their true worth only as late as 1917, when Hu Shih, Columbia University doctor of philosophy and professor at the National University in Peking, began to lecture on the Chinese drama as drama and to publish the best of the novels with historical introductions. Professor Hu Shih finds in the language of these works a compromise which he hopes will be an aid in inducing the Chinese of to-day finally to adopt the vernacular as the language of science and belles-lettres. For, in spite of the concessions made to the firmly rooted conventions of the conservative class of scholars for the sake of lending dignity to their works and securing the approval of the literati, the novel and the drama, owing to their popular appeal, deviated largely from the dead language and approached the vernacular of the day.

The dramatists are as a rule men who are not otherwise famous as writers. Biographical material concerning the authors of the “One Hundred Yuan Dramas”, the collection of plays considered classical in China, is so meager that it does not seem worth while to mention names about whose bearers little more can be said than that they “flourished.” About five hundred plays were extant at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, while to-day there exist but one hundred and sixteen. Modern Celestial scholars are proud of the fact that an overwhelming percentage of the authors were real Chinese, practically all from the territory now covered by the provinces of Chihli, Shantung and Shansi, about a third of them born in Peking (called Yenching at the time). Nine tenths of the authors lived in what is called the first period of the Yuan drama (1235-1280) with its center in Peking; while the much smaller Southern School developed later (1280-1335) around Hangchow. Most of the authors were from among the common people, and only one among the whole ninety odd was a Tartar. Chinese critics regard Kuan Han-ching (the author of “The Sufferings of Tou-E”, a play discussed below) as the greatest of all these writers, because his manner is true and natural. Others are spoken of as having a style that is lofty and magnificent, or pure and beautiful, or biting and vigorous.

The historian of the Chinese drama, Mr. Wang Kuo-wei, quoted above, states that the Yuan drama is a natural growth out of the previously existing forms and the traditional plots. More than thirty Yuan plots, he points out, had been used before in plays of the Sung Dynasty. He finds the chief advance of the Yuan drama to consist in the employment of more flexible verse forms for the poetic sections and the use of more dialogue in the place of narration and description. Thus the essence of drama, action, takes the place of narration. Moreover, the drama rose to the dignity of an art. Previous to this the plays, generally dialogues by clowns, had been mostly interlarded in entertainments of acrobatics, dancing, and music. Such performances took place frequently at the royal court and are described also in the writings of the Italian Ma-Ke-Po-Lo (Marco Polo) when he tells about the feast of the Grand Khan: “When the repast is finished, and the tables have been removed, persons of various descriptions enter the hall and amongst these a troop of comedians and performers on various instruments, as also tumblers and jugglers, who exhibit their skill in the presence of the Grand Khan to the high amusement and gratification of all the spectators.”[11]

As has been stated above, the dramas soon took on certain formal aspects. In general they have four acts, with a prologue, epilogue, or interlude, which makes them in appearance and length quite similar to our five-act plays. Some plays—analogous to our trilogies—have acts of a number that is a multiple of four and each group of four acts forms a unity by itself. For example, “The Western Chamber”, has twenty acts and forms really five plays. According to Chinese critics the drama is composed of three elements: (1) action; (2) speech; (3) singing. Speech may be divided into monologue and dialogue; the purpose of the latter is to advance the action and of the former to arouse emotions—a function that very properly invites comparison with the rôle of the chorus in the Greek drama. No longer are there only two characters in these plays, but we now find four chief rôles along with various minor parts. In very rigid manner only one character is made to sing in each act, which means that each of the four characters has one act in which he or she plays the main rôle. This arrangement has had its peculiar effect which can be witnessed in present-day Peking, where plays of this type are staged, inasmuch as a famous actor who plays, let us say, the rôle of the lover, will not present entire dramas, but only such of the acts as give him the principal part. In the new plays of to-day, of course, a different practice is followed but the old repertoire of the average Chinese theater is so well known that it makes very little difference whether a drama is presented as a whole or in part. The character types of the Yuan drama, the Mei (male) and Tan (female), with their many variations, are in general quite similar to the types of present-day drama, a discussion of which is given in a later chapter. In the printed texts of the play characters are designated not by their names, but by the rôles which they play.

The classical drama of China offers many interesting parallels to different stages in the development of our drama, though it nowhere equals the plays of our great masters. Its greatest height reaches the level of perhaps the pre-Shakespearean drama in content, construction, and manner of presentation. The presentation of Chinese plays with the projecting platform stage, the lack of scenery and the emphasis on gorgeous costume, the playing of female parts by male actors, the extemporizing of clowns, and the use of music in “flourish” and “alarums” offers a strikingly close parallel to Elizabethan staging. But that is a chapter by itself.

In the consideration of Chinese drama a few facts of Chinese life must be borne in mind. The beau ideal in the Middle Kingdom is not the warrior, but the scholar. There is no hereditary aristocracy, but wealth and power falls to him who distinguishes himself in the competitive examinations and thus becomes viceroy of a province or some other type of high official. The passing of the examination therefore serves as the deus ex machina in many plays, solving all knotty problems accumulated by the fifth act. Marriages are arranged by the parents, and the romance of courtship is a rare and forbidden fruit. The religious and ethical background consists chiefly of a respect for the minute moral precepts of Confucius, with some Buddhistic notions of reincarnation and some Taoist superstitions impartially admixed.

To examine a few of the acknowledged masterpieces of the Yuan drama is to invite fascinating comparisons. In “Chao Mei Hsiang” (Intrigue of a Lady’s Maid) we have a young servant girl uniting two lovers, a sort of Dorine of Molière’s “Tartuffe” in a Chinese setting. The destiny of the young man and the girl have been settled beforehand by their parents, much as Orgon in “Tartuffe” disposes of his daughter’s future:

The lovers in both plays revolt against parental authority, and in both cases a happy ending is brought about indirectly through fortunate intervention on the part of the monarch himself. The meat contained in the Chinese play is about what “Tartuffe” would be with Tartuffe left out.

Two generals arrange, shortly before they die in battle, that their children are to marry. The son of the one, therefore, while on his journey to the capital to take his examination, visits at the home of the widow of his father’s friend. The widow invites him to take up his abode in a pleasant pavilion in the garden, but she meets with icy silence every reference on the part of the young man to marriage. This is because she wishes to observe the very strictest code of conduct, which ordains that when a girl has lost her father she dare not marry until three years afterward. The young people fall in love at first sight; the young man so desperately that the yearning for the girl he is not permitted to see after their first accidental meeting causes him to become violently ill. The quick-witted, impertinent maid sent to look after the wants of the patient carries messages between him and the young girl and finally arranges a meeting on a moonlit night. The lovers have exchanged but a few words when the mother discovers them. She punishes the maid and sends the young man away in disgrace. He goes to the capital and passes such a brilliant examination that he attracts the attention of the emperor. The latter becomes interested in the young man’s future and decides to carry out the wish of his two faithful generals. The marriage is arranged by imperial command. Both lovers are in ignorance as to who their selected mates are to be, and at first are very much dejected; but when they meet as bride and groom their happiness is all the greater when they realize that the choice of their elders is also the choice of their hearts.

The play moves in an atmosphere of strictly prescribed etiquette of which the mother is a stony-eyed incarnation. The facetious little maid is a breaker of rules in the interest of more human considerations, and, like the servant in all our comedies from the time of Menander downward, she tells her mistress some frank home-truths. Not only is the young man a scholar, but the heroine with her maid-companion also have been ardent students of the classics. Quotations from Confucius, Mencius, Laotze, and the Buddhist writings lend their sparkle to the dialogue. The lovers exchange poems exhibiting that charming impressionism of delicately sketched moonlight on the lotus or snowfall on pine trees so characteristic of Chinese verse. Allusions to myths abound; for example, to the moonlit cloud that wooed the mother of Huang Ti as Jupiter did Io. As in the plays of Bernard Shaw and of his predecessor Shakespeare, the heroine takes the initiative by tossing into the room of the rather passive hero a bag embroidered with characters revealing her love. A wistful note is sounded by the young scholar when the wedding commanded by the emperor is, as he believes, about to unite him to a woman other than the one he loves: “Musicians, please do not now play the air of the teals meeting in chaste pleasure who lament and yet feel no sorrow.” This speech gives the same blending of the emotions so often spoken of by our poets in analyzing the mystery of love, perhaps most strikingly in Goethe’s lines:

The play “Ho Lang Tan” (The Singing Girl) portrays the punishment of vice 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.”

“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.

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.

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.

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.