CHAPTER NINE

ANALOGIES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

I have often met with people who ask: “Do the Chinese have the division of plays into tragedies and comedies?” and when they learn that there is no such division they feel this to be a great defect in the Chinese theater. But it might be well worth recalling that these Greek terms did not originally have their present-day connotations, and that their original meanings were perhaps not far removed from the divisions which the Chinese make in classifying their plays. Tragedy meant originally a “goat song”, and philologists are divided on the question as to whether the name is derived from the fact that the song was sung by revelers worshiping Dionysus, who, because of their appearance and licentious character were called “goats”, or whether it was sung at the sacrifice of a goat, or whether a goat was the prize which was awarded to the successful poet.[28] At any rate there is no doubt that tragedy was a musical term. The same is true of comedy, which is the song of the _comus_, or band of revelers, who marched along in procession carrying aloft the phallus and chanting songs to Dionysus which were called phallic songs. The scurrilous remarks interlarded in the intervals between songs by the leader of the _comus_ gave rise to the form of light entertainment known as comedy in the theater of to-day. In the Middle Ages it had the meaning of a poetic work with a happy ending, for which reason Dante called his long poem a “comedy”, which later writers made “The Divine Comedy.” Thus we see the two words have deviated altogether from their original meanings. We know very little about Greek music of these earliest days, but we hear also of Doric music and Phrygian music employed in the theater. The Doric music was grave, dignified, and employed the harp as the chief musical instrument, while the Phrygian mode was emotional and was accompanied by the flute.

Now let us look for a moment at the Chinese classification of styles of drama. We generally hear of the divisions of _kuan-ch’ü_, _p’i-huang_ (a telescoping of _hsi-pi_ and _er-huang_) and thirdly of _pang-tzu_. These are all musical terms. _Kuan-ch’ü_ is accompanied by the flute, and is said to be the most literary, the most graceful and soft; also because of its lack of vulgarity it is caviare to the general. It is rarely performed nowadays, but was quite popular in the Ming Dynasty. It was directly descended from the classical Yuan drama, whose authors were scholars ousted by the Mongols from their public offices. This name is derived from a geographical term, just as are the Greek Doric and Phrygian modes. The _pang-tzu_ came to Peking from Shansi during the Ch’ing Dynasty. The chief instrument is a rude kind of fiddle with a round, flat sounding box, and the _genre_ is considered to be exciting and vulgar. The _er-huang_ or _hsi-p’i_ (said to be very similar) are also styles adopted during the Manchu Dynasty. They employ as their chief instrument the well-known _hu-ch’in_. There is a great similarity between Greek and Chinese thought, in that both speak of the good moral effects of music if only there be the proper harmony; and likewise of the immoral effects of vulgar, exciting music. I believe one could find almost exact parallels in the writings of Plato and of many Chinese authors,[29] even so modern a one as Tsai Yuan-pei. We modern Europeans and Americans, on the other hand, seem to have given up the idea of music as a means for developing harmonious and moral souls.

In practice music was employed in the Greek theater not only by the chorus, but also by the actors in the midst of the spoken dialogue when a particularly emotional point was reached. When the passions rose to a high pitch the musical accompaniment commenced and the actor sang; such a passage was, for example, the recital of the forebodings of Cassandra in Æschylus’ “Agamemnon”, interrupted by the Argive elders who form the chorus. Exactly the same practice obtains in the Chinese theater, as any one can readily observe in almost any play. Some scholars have asserted that the whole of a Greek play was accompanied by music, but it is generally believed now that only the lyrical passages were sung, while the iambic dialogue was spoken. In this similarity of the Greek and the Chinese theaters we can find an aid in our efforts at reconstructing the past—perhaps worthy of consideration by _régisseurs_ who attempt to put on the stage to-day some of the plays which stirred the imagination of the Athenians of old. Possibly it may also be a shock to some who have seen modern representations in which the actors, as well as the chorus, employ a solemn and stately, sometimes monotonous recitative, to learn that the ancients sang or chanted a great part of their plays; a shock such as we are likely to receive when we first learn that the ancients did not employ marble in their architecture in its austere virginal whiteness only, but that they frequently colored their buildings. But just as a traveler coming to China may see beautiful architectural results achieved by the bold use of color in architecture, so he may come closer to the real—not the pseudo-classical—art by reflecting on the effect of musical interruptions in Sophocles’ “Œdipus” or Euripides’ “Medea.”

In Greece the theater was an institution which gave performances at the time of certain religious festivals, and it was in this sense a folk theater. In Peking also there are certain plays given always at particular festivals, and dealing always with the supernatural, or if you prefer, with religion. On the first day of the New Year, for example, there is the “Ch’ing Shih Shan”, a play dealing with the gods’ conquest of the devils; on the fifth day of the New Year comes a play in honor of the god of wealth; on the fifth of the fifth month, a play describing the overcoming of the five dangerous poisons; and on the seventh of the seventh month the “Meeting on the Milky Way.” These plays persist in spite of the commercialization of the Peking theaters.

The student of European literature whose field of research lies in the reconstruction of the past can find in China a wonderful source book, for this is a magic land where for Europeans and Americans the clock has been set back several centuries. We can see the Middle Ages enacted before our very eyes, and get in that way a vivid picture of things as they were in the Europe of yesterday. In illustration of this I wish to cite the Chinese theater of to-day, and to offer the suggestion that the Shakespeare scholar who has seen the Peking theaters of the present time has—if one may use the figure—not only the words, but also the tune, of the Elizabethan drama.

If I take a tourist to the theater his first remark often is that this is just like the Shakespearean theater. And it is indeed not surprising that it should be so, for China to-day is at about the same stage of culture as England was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. There is a court where royal splendor can be seen; the deposed emperor still receives in the Forbidden City the faithful Manchus, who come in gorgeous raiment and with fastidious regard for court etiquette to offer their congratulations on the occasion of his birthday.[30] The ordinary man of means dresses not in the stereotyped manner of our present-day civilization, but follows his taste in the selection of rich purple, wine-colored, or other shades of silk. Sedan chairs are still used as a common means of transportation. Torture is still practiced, and the heads of executed criminals are hung up in the streets in case of a revolution or other great excitement. The servants are typical Dromios in their submissiveness and occasional impertinence. The streets are frequently still the narrow and filthy lanes of medieval times. Most important, there are few factories, and manufacture is done by leisurely home industry. Much of this is passing with the coming of industry, the automobile and the tram car, the Europeanized tailor and the moving-picture machine; yet much that is picturesque in Peking continues to flourish, and the theater with its huge community of actors is one of the most conservative elements.

To begin with, the Chinese and the Elizabethan theaters are almost identical in structure, and for much the same reasons. The origin of the sixteenth-century theater in London is to be found in the innyard in which a platform had been erected for the performance; and when James Burbage in 1576 built the “Theater” outside the jurisdiction of the City Fathers of London he erected what was practically an innyard without the inn. There was a platform stage projecting into the yard, where the rabble could find standing room, and a gallery in which the wealthier patrons could be seated. The origin of the Chinese theater building, such as it is found in Peking, is very similar. Performances were first given in the courtyards of temples or of the houses of rich men. A platform was erected at one end. The spectators stood in the courtyard or sat at tables. The latter was particularly the case when theaters were held in the private courtyards of princes or other rich men. For centuries theatricals in China were either religious or private, and public theaters which any one may attend for the payment of an admission fee are a fairly recent institution, but when they were built they were constructed on the model of the temple or palace theaters, with a projecting roofed stage at one end, the cheaper seats on the ground floor and the more expensive ones in the gallery. The Chinese audiences have been trained to regard the stage as anywhere and not as a particular place; it is unlocalized, as in Shakespeare’s time. The roof on the stage serves the same purposes as in Elizabethan times; it is a protection for the actors against rain, and a “heaven” from which deities may be lowered.

In distinction to our modern theater in which we present a series of pictures within a frame called the proscenium, which we cover with a curtain while the pictures are being shifted, both the Elizabethan and the Chinese stage have neither a proscenium nor, in general, a curtain. In both the stages is an unframed rostrum thrust bodily forth into the auditorium, surrounded on three sides, if not on four, by spectators. In short it is not a picture stage, but a platform stage. On such a stage there can be, of course, no question of artistic lighting effects; the plays are performed either by daylight, as they were in Shakespeare’s day, or by the light of huge arc lamps that illuminate stage and audience alike. As the actors cannot present artistic stage pictures to three sides of the house at the same time, it is not surprising that, as the English literary historians tell us, the appeal was more to the ear than to the eye. That this is equally true in China is seen from the Peking term for a theatrical performance, _t’ing-hsi_, which means a play that is heard. In old Peking theaters the seats on the ground floor are arranged at right angles to the stage, along tables on which are served tea and cakes; recently built theatres, however, have their seats (with rails for the inevitable teapots) running parallel to the stage.

In speaking of the chief characteristics that distinguish the Elizabethan from other stages Professor Thorndyke says:[31]

The fixed and most important principle was the use of the projecting platform as a sort of neutral, vaguely localized territory, where almost anything might happen. The second principle was the use of the inner stage with its curtains (and to some extent the upper stage) as a means to denote locality more exactly, to employ properties more readily, and to indicate changes of scene more effectively.

[Illustration: THE FORTUNE THEATER]

[Illustration: A TYPICAL PEKING THEATER]

From what has been said it is apparent that in regard to the first principle the Chinese and the Shakespearean stage are identical. In regard to the use of the curtain and the inner stage, scholars are very much divided as to the manner and frequency with which they were employed. To quote Professor Thorndyke once more:[32]

The total evidence of the stage directions alone indicates that the arrangement prescribed was in general use in important theaters, public and private, though doubtless its adoption was gradual and subject to variation. We may suppose that the size and visibility of the inner stage varied in different theaters, and that the extent to which the curtain was used changed from decade to decade, or playwright to playwright, or manager to manager, or even according to the state of the weather and light.

The use of the curtain in Chinese theaters is very rare; and the curtain itself is by no means like the curtain to which we are accustomed. When a relatively elaborate setting is about to be placed on the stage a curtain about ten feet high by about twenty feet wide is carried by stage hands to the front of the stage, and there stretched out to cut off the view of the audience. The ends of the curtain are each sewed to a bamboo pole held upright by two coolies. In this most primitive manner a garden setting or a heavenly throne is made to appear to the audience in one burst of glory instead of being carried on piece by piece, as is the case with most properties and sceneries. The Chinese playhouse has no inner and likewise no upper stage. Curtains about beds or other pieces of furniture are used to “discover” actors in the same manner as was done on the Elizabethan stage. But all of these articles are regularly carried on the stage in full view of the audience. The size of the two stages seems to be about the same, except that the Elizabethan was much wider. The dimensions given for the stage of the Fortune are forty-three feet wide by twenty-seven and a half feet deep; while a typical Chinese stage measures about twenty-five feet in both directions.

We generally think of the Elizabethan stage as very primitive, and in this respect the Chinese stage is very much like it, only a bit more so. Both stages lack curtains, and therefore in both properties are brought on in full sight of the audience, making necessary in China the “property men” who furnished so much amusement in the performances of “The Yellow Jacket.” Shakespeare however arranged that at the end of a play, for example in “Hamlet”, the dead were carried off the stage, while in Peking convention allows that a victim of murder arise and walk off, after having gone through the motion of falling dead. The London theaters also had (at least such seems to have been definitely proved by recent writers) a small curtain at the rear of the stage shutting off a place which served as cave, shop, tomb, bed, Bathsheba’s bath, or any other locality that needed to be “discovered.” In Peking theaters things are much more conventionalized; a table represents a shop, a blue curtain with lines painted on it, held up by two stage hands, makes a city wall, a chair may be a gate or a prison door, a boat on a lake may be represented simply by the actors appearing with oars with which they seem to be rowing. Much is also symbolized; an actor on the bare stage goes through the motions of opening and shutting a door and thus shows that he has left the house. When a curtain is needed to represent a listener in another room, or a patient in a bed behind drawn curtains, two vertical bamboo poles with a horizontal one attached to them from which the curtain hangs are placed on the stage by the “property men.” The arrangement is most primitive and casual; the poles are generally tied to chairs. If the drawing of the “Swan” showing neither an inner stage nor a curtain is authentic, a similar portable curtain may have been the method employed in Elizabethan times. In Peking this is a rich, figured fabric, even though not exactly an “Arras.” If a Chinese Polonius were to conceal himself behind the arras, it would have been previously brought on by the “property men” at the beginning of the act or perhaps even just a few moments before it was needed. In a Chinese theater the center back of the stage is a wall hung with a rich piece of tapestry just as free from doors or recesses as the wall of the “Swan.” There are doors, however, at both sides of the rear wall, corresponding to those in the “Swan” drawing. As the Chinese theater has no upper stage, men on a city wall, for example, stand on a table behind the curtain held up by the stage hands. A general surveying his troops from a mountain top or a god on his throne in heaven sit on a chair placed on top of a table.

In the paucity of the stage properties we find another parallel. In Albright’s “The Shakespearean Stage”,[33] the properties are listed, and I can say from my five years’ experience that the same and no more are found on the Chinese stage; bedroom: a bed, table, chairs or stools, and lights; a hall: table, chairs, and stools; presence chamber: a throne, and occasionally tables and chairs; a church: an altar, and if needed a tomb; prison scenes: usually no properties are mentioned except fetters and chains; woods or park: large and small artificial trees, shrubbery, and benches; shop scenes: a counter and a few wares. The Chinese theater is often even a bit more simple; for example, a chair serves as a throne, or a table with a few decorations as an altar. However, for certain plays fairly elaborate paper properties are used, which are brought on and removed in full sight of the audience. In both theaters the imagination of the audience is strained a great deal more than is the case in a Belasco play; and many conventions that differ from ours, such as bringing on properties in full sight of the audience, seem just as natural as it seems to us that a stage room has only three walls.

Even though the Elizabethan and the Chinese stages have no scenery of any kind, yet it is wrong to imagine that they seem bare, for the color is supplied in the rich and elaborate robes of the actors. A Chinese stage filled with actors in court costumes of yellow, red, black, blue, or purple, with inwoven designs, fierce warriors with masks or painted faces, wearing pheasant feathers six feet long, and lovely maidens in costumes of exquisite pastel shades, walking or running about on a gaudy Oriental rug against a background of rich tapestry, form a veritable riot of color, very similar in its effect, no doubt, to what was seen on the Elizabethan stage when the actors appeared in their gowns costing from £80 to £100 in modern money. They were elaborate creations of velvet trimmed with gold and silver lace and embroidery, capped by the “forest of feathers” that Hamlet mentions as necessary for the equipment of an actor, with tapestry from Arras as background. To quote Professor Thorndyke,[34] “No stage cared more for fine clothes than the Elizabethan or lavished a larger portion of its expenses on dress.” In both theaters almost no attention is paid to historical appropriateness of costume. Elizabethan actors sometimes wore masks also, just as the Chinese often do.

[Illustration: THE ORCHESTRA SEATED IN A CORNER OF THE STAGE

From Jacovleff, “Le Théâtre Chinois”]

The stage direction “alarums” for the entry of a king or other important personage, which may never have been associated by the reader with anything definite at all, will be full of meaning to any Westerner who has heard the Chinese orchestra sound the _Leitmotiv_ for the entry of a famous general. The Chinese orchestra sits on the stage in full view of the audience, while in Shakespeare’s day the upper stage was the normal place for the “noise.” The use in the Elizabethan days of the word “noise” for both music and orchestra establishes another great similarity between the two theaters. In Shakespeare’s day the music seems to have been confined chiefly to the intermissions between the acts and to occasional songs, while in the Chinese drama almost every emotional part is punctuated by song. It approaches close to opera in many cases in the number of lines sung by the actors. One division of Chinese plays is that into civil and military, and in the latter the fighting is always accompanied by a terrible din of brass, drum and string music. This frantic noise stimulates in the audience the excitement which the desperate contest in arms is supposed to arouse. As a fact, these military plays are very popular with the masses, and they take up fully half the program.

In the eating, drinking, smoking, hawking, towel-throwing, spitting, and loud interruptions always found in the Chinese theater we have another close parallel to the Elizabethan. It is well known that hawkers went about before and during the performance selling ale, tobacco, and various articles of food. Apples were fought over by young apprentices and sometimes even used to pelt the actors. The women in the galleries were offered pipes to smoke. Young nobles insisted on sitting on the stage in order that they might display themselves and their garments, while pages lighted their pipes for them. The groundlings in the yard were intent on the broad humor and the fighting in the plays. The women of the town in the gallery probably also had other motives for coming besides that of seeing the play. All of this a Westerner can understand very much better after he has seen a Chinese theater, for the conditions are very similar; except that the Chinese lack of pugnacity makes the spectators perhaps a little less violent.[35] In this connection it is interesting to compare the methods of applause and criticism in Shakespeare’s time and in present-day China. Applause was rendered by clapping—some writers refer to it as “thundering”—while disapproval was evinced by hissing, and by even more violent methods, as may be judged from the verse of an Elizabethan drama:

We may be pelted off for aught we know, With apples, egges, or stones, from thence belowe.

In China applause is expressed by shouting the word “_hao_”, good, and disapproval by no more violent method generally than by a sarcastic intonation of the same word! It it difficult for a foreigner to tell which is meant, especially since applause is rendered for subtleties of intonation often lost even on natives. However there is also the word “_t’ung_”, which is very rarely used to express disgust with the performance; but when it is employed the actors are driven off the stage in utter shame and confusion. In recent years, however, clapping has been introduced from the West along with many other innovations. But in spite of all distractions one can very often see a Chinese audience sitting spellbound during the recitation of a particularly beautiful passage or the presentation of a tragic scene, as I imagine must have been the case in Shakespearean England also.

Without the aid of scenery or lighting the acting must be splendid to hold an audience, and there is the danger that it become loudly declamatory and bombastic. Hamlet’s well-known criticisms frequently apply in Peking, for there are many who mouth their lines so that the town crier could improve upon them, who saw the air too much with their hands, who tear a passion to tatters, who strut and bellow as though one of nature’s journeymen had made them, and thus make the judicious grieve. However, good actors of all times avoid this. Hamlet tells of a good actor who

Could force his soul to this conceit That from her working all his visage wann’d; Tears in his eyes, distraction in ’s aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With form to his conceit! and all for nothing! For Hecuba!

It is similarly impressive to see Mei Lan-fang, for example, playing Mu Lan, the Chinese Joan of Arc, presenting in the first part the coy maiden and loving daughter, and in the second the brave warrior, or to see him (he is an actor who always interprets female rôles) portray the emotions of the daughter who finds her old father in prison but who dares not make herself known. In most theaters in Peking the acting is good, so that the foreigner can often follow the play, even though he does not understand one word of what the actors are saying. For vivid portrayal of emotions, facial expression, and delightful byplay, the Chinese actors are wonderful, just as the scholars conjecture that the English players must have been in Shakespeare’s day.

[Illustration: A CLOWN

Chinese Character Type]

The Chinese audiences demand the fool, the acrobat, and the dancer quite as loudly as they were demanded by the groundling in Shakespeare’s time. The Chinese clown is very good at improvising, and provokes the same criticism that Hamlet made, “And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.” Giles in his “History of Chinese Literature” writes in this connection, “As they stand in the classical collections or the acting editions, Chinese plays are as unobjectionable[36] as Chinese poems or general literature. On the stage, however, actors are allowed great license in gagging, and the direction which their gag takes is chiefly the reason which keeps respectable women away from the playhouse.” This recalls that in Elizabethan days the respectable women who attended the theater wore masks or made judicious use of their fans to hide their blushes.[37] It is only in the last few years that the better class of women have begun to attend the theater in Peking; just as the mingling of the sexes in the theater was an innovation in the early seventeenth century in England. In Peking, as formerly was the case in London, the women are admitted to the gallery only.

A vital similarity between the two theaters is the fact that women’s parts are played by men. The reasons in both cases are moral or Puritanical motives. The similarity in this case is accidental, for it was only about George Washington’s time that women were forbidden to appear upon the stage; during the Ming Dynasty many princes and officials had large numbers of actresses in their palaces—a custom that led to gross abuses and immorality. Therefore the early Manchu emperors forbade women to appear as actresses. But things are fast changing in this respect in China, for in some parts of the country men and women appear together on the stage, while in Peking, where this is forbidden by the police, there exist two theaters in which women act both male and female rôles. The Chinese consider the women poor artists, and the connoisseurs do not patronize these theaters, or if they do they apologize for it. A Chinese actor who respects himself will never appear on the same stage with actresses. That the Elizabethans likewise thought women incapable of good acting can be seen from the patronizing tone of Thomas Coryat in which he tells (1611) of having seen women acting in Venice “and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture and whatsoever convenient for a player, as ever I saw any masculine actor.”[38]

In connection with the subject of impersonation of the other sex, which we see nowadays only in burlesque or minstrel shows, I should like to quote some observations made by Goethe[39] in Italy on seeing a performance of Goldoni’s “La Locandiera” in which a man acted the part of the heroine, the pretty innkeeper. Goethe of course grants that the highest form of art cannot be found in such a representation, but he says that he would like to speak a few words in defense of this practice to tell how one might well derive considerable pleasure from such a performance. He states that he went to the theater with prejudice, but once there he became reconciled to it and even experienced a certain kind of pleasure never felt by him before. He tried to analyze this æsthetic sensation and came to the conclusion it consisted in the enjoyment of the fact that the actor could not possibly play himself, but had to put his art of imitation to a far greater test, that of holding the mirror up to life in a sex not his own. The spectator enjoys a much more self-conscious delusion, just as when he sees a young man playing the part of Rip Van Winkle or King Lear. There is a more conscious æsthetic pleasure in seeing how well a young man has studied the actions of a young girl in order to present a Rosalind, or how perfectly Mei Lan-fang can copy the dainty dress, actions, and walk of a Chinese lady. My experience has been that this is much more pleasant than to see round-cheeked girls essay the rôles of fearful generals or cruel husbands in the woman’s theater in Peking.

It has often been remarked that as a result of the fact that boy actors played the women’s parts in the Elizabethan theater we find Shakespeare’s heroines very frequently masquerading as pages. Julia, Portia, Nerissa, Jessica, Viola, Rosalind, and Imogen all appear as handsome youths. An analogous result in the Chinese theater of to-day is that the heroines appear in an endless number of cases as warriors. The Chinese have not only their Mu Lan (who goes to war in her father’s place because the latter is old and feeble), but very many other heroines who invariably defeat men in battle. Chinese history or legend does not account for this, but it is due to the fact that the actors who portray women seek opportunities to display their skill in fighting. This fighting is a highly conventionalized art, a combination of dancing and acrobatics performed to a deafening and exciting music, which, in regard to its place on the program, can best be compared to our ballet. Most foreigners in Peking are kept away from the theater by the fearful noise made in these “fighting plays”, as they are called, but if these same people could attend an Elizabethan theater they would possibly find that the great delight of the audiences was the “noise” (music), the clatter and scuffle of the battles, the drums, the squibs, and the cannon.[40]

There are in Peking three companies of boy actors, the largest of which has about three hundred in its theater. These are training schools for actors in which the boys of eight to sixteen or eighteen years are given very arduous courses in singing, acrobatics, stage fighting, and all the other arts that an actor requires. The competition of these “little eyases” in Peking might well arouse the ire of some of the regular actors, as it did Shakespeare’s (“Hamlet”, II, 2, 362), for in China the life of the common actor is a hard one, most of them eking out a meager living at about twenty cents a day.

The position of the actor in society is very low in Peking, just as it was in London. A Chinese moralist might well apply to them the words written in 1759:[41] “Players are masters of vice, teachers of wantonnesse, spurres to impuritie, the Sonnes of idlenesse, so longe as they live in this order, loathe them.” Under the former dynasty the actors and their sons, together with the sons of prostitutes, jailers, and lictors, were not eligible for taking the examinations. Even now they usually intermarry only among their own number, and they suffer also from various other discriminations. Most of them were catamites, until the Republic abolished this formerly legalized institution. Mei Lan-fang, an actor who has risen to high perfection in his art, as well as to great wealth, an artist who may tour America in the near future, would have ample reason in the present organization of Chinese society to reproach Fortune in Shakespeare’s words:

That did not better for my life provide, Than public means which public manners breeds, Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: Pity me then and wish I were renewed.

Peoples are alike and differ also in what they consider to be humorous. It has been said that the first comedy was the torture of a captive by his enemies. This sort of performance would nowadays of course be impossible; yet in most of our comedies we enjoy heartily the discomfiture of victims of circumstances. We have not yet become too refined to enjoy the difficulties of a man whose senses are benumbed by alcohol, of a bald man, a lame man, yes, even a deaf man. The condition of a blind man, however, strikes us as too tragic to figure in a comedy, and no modern comedian could draw a laugh from his audience by fooling a tottering old man bereft of his sight. Yet every one who has seen “The Merchant of Venice” acted recalls very well what Launcelot Gobbo does to his blind old father, and I have seen in Chinese theaters how a blind old beggar deceived by a clown affords huge amusement to the audience.

As I have already stated, Chinese and Elizabethan audiences are alike also in that they use their imaginations much more vividly than we do. For them a draped screen represents a city wall, and the bare stage any country, a ship, a mountain, any house, a street, or whatever is needed in the particular scene acted. Warriors on horseback in the Chinese theaters carry whips to let the audience know that they are mounted on chargers, while Macbeth and Banquo rode on the stage on hobbyhorses—and were taken seriously. I recall a performance in the Chinese City in which there suddenly came running on the stage on all fours a man in a tiger skin, and I laughed because of droll recollections of Shaw’s “Androcles and the Lion.” But no one else laughed; to the Chinese present it was a tiger, just as real a tiger as the actors on the stage were for the moment real kings and queens, soldiers and servants. Of this particular illusion more anon.

Because there are many similarities in the theaters, stages, actors, conventions, audiences, and the psychology of the spectator of Shakespeare’s day and of present-day Peking, I certainly should be the last to say that because a thing is so in local theaters, it must have been identical in London three hundred years ago. Yet it seems that since human nature is very much the same everywhere, it would be safer, if one wished to hazard conjectures as to what was true in the past, to take a living example of the theater on the same level of culture, than to look back at the Elizabethan stage in the light of what has been accomplished since, and what happens to be the fad at the present time. This is the day of stage lighting and color effects, of Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt, and Bakst, but we should hardly think that these problems troubled Burbage, who had neither electric light nor scenery, and who performed his plays on an uncurtained stage by daylight. Yet Professor H. T. Stephenson of Indiana University, for fifteen years a lecturer on Shakespeare, author of “Shakespeare’s London”, and “The Elizabethan People”, by profession a specialist in reconstructing the times of “Merrie England”, discusses seriously in his very stimulating “Study of Shakespeare” (page 40) the plight of the stage manager of Shakepearean days, who could never tell beforehand how the gaily dressed young nobles sitting on the stage would fit into his color scheme! He also believes that changes in the stage setting could not have been made in full sight of the audience, because “this would have upset entirely the unity if not the gravity of the piece.”

In Peking one can see very remarkable things on the stage that fail to upset the gravity of any present except the Westerners, who are used to different conventions in the theater. Professor Stephenson, with the results of three hundred years of stage experience at his hand, believes that the Elizabethans must have been fools if they could not have thought of the same useful devices for the theater that he knows of. To quote (page 47):

“To my mind the situation suggested by these facts reduces itself almost to a mathematical problem; if one of us can easily invent such a staging for an Elizabethan scene, as any ingenious person could construct out of what we know they had in those days, is it unfair to assume that the ingenious Elizabethans did as well if not better? More likely better. They were more used than we are to making a little go a great way.” He even goes on to explain how one could put up a curtain, simply by the use of canvas, wire, a few rings, and presto, the thing is done. A play without the commonplace scenic devices of the twentieth century is unthinkable to him.

Another theorist is Mr. Corbin, in the _Century Magazine_ for December, 1911. He proves to his own satisfaction that Burbage and his colleagues had means for darkening the stage.[42] It seems this author staged “The Winter’s Tale” in New York a few years ago. In this play a bear has to appear on the stage, and this part was acted by a man on all fours. At first the scene was played on a lighted stage, and all the New Yorkers present laughed at the sight of the actor in a bearskin. Then they hit upon the device of darkening the stage, and having the actor-bear run quickly across. When this was done, no one’s risibilities were affected. This forms one of Mr. Corbin’s chief arguments for his assumption that the Elizabethan stage was darkened; namely, that it would have offended the good taste of the audience to see in broad daylight in a serious scene, an actor impersonating a bear. If human nature can endure this convention in Peking, with the above-mentioned tiger, why should we assume that three hundred years ago people felt as we do now, and base on this the novel theory that stages were darkened in those days?

A large measure of the success attained by “The Yellow Jacket” was due to the fact that the Chinese stage conventions employed seemed so funny to us provincial Westerners that they caused a great deal of happy laughter. But this is really quite as intelligent as the attitude of the rustic who sought out Richard III after the performance and offered to sell him a good horse for less than a kingdom. It is very strange that even otherwise scholarly men, like, for example, Victor Albright in “The Shakespearean Stage”, struggle with all fours against the possibility that in the theater of the gentle Shakespeare there might have been committed such desecrations as setting properties on the stage in full view of the audience. He approaches the evidence with blinkers when it seems to contradict his theory. He says (page 126): “Only the dramatists had not yet learned to use explicit stage directions.” On page 143 he tells us that the Elizabethans did not read stage directions literally. Then on page 106: “Here in the midst of a street scene is a direction to set the stage with a table, stand, chairs, stools, etc.,—just such properties as are used in the next scene, a counting room. We cannot believe that a manager would disturb an important scene by setting the stage for a coming one.” Further, on page 110: “The placing and replacing of a regular setting in full view of the audience never was a _general custom_. It is contrary to the very nature of the stage,—an illusive, make-believe world.” In my opinion it is contrary only to the very nature of a provincial New Yorker.

Let me add in passing that William Archer holds that “in the generality of cases properties were brought on in full sight of the audience, often in the middle of the action.”[43]

Doctor Albright, in “The Shakespearean Stage” (pages 122_ff._) condemns with sarcasm (which seems well merited) the theory of Brodmeier, who holds that the entire stage in Shakespeare’s theater was curtained from view. But I should like to question whether or not his own judgments would have been quite the same if he had known the Chinese stage before he wrote his estimable thesis. A Chinese actor walks once around the stage in full view of the audience, and in conformity with the ruling conventions he has traveled miles, or hundreds of miles, as the plot requires. Doctor Albright, arguing backwards from the Restoration staging, comes to the conclusion that there was in the Elizabethan theater a regular changing from inner to outer scenes, and vice versa, and that the few pieces of furniture which constituted the stage setting were always carefully shut off from the view of the audience. He quotes an example with his comment from a play called “Pinner of Wakefield”, Act IV, Scenes 3-4. “Jenkins enters a shoemaker’s shop, and dares the owner to meet him at ‘the towne’s end.’ The challenge is accepted, and after a certain amount of stage business, _during which the curtains must have been closed_ [italics mine], Jenkins says, ‘Now we are at the towne’s end, what say you now?’” However, I should add that in his concluding paragraph Doctor Albright is by no means dogmatic, but gives this merely as his theory, stating that there is absolutely no way of proving it.

With all the striking similarities in the Shakespearean and the Chinese theater there are of course also vast differences, especially in the background of the two. So far as I know there has never existed in China a manner of staging which could in any way be compared to the medieval system of mansions. Likewise the evolution of the platform stage into the picture-frame stage of the present day makes it seem that even on the projecting stage the feeling for the need of the curtain for the sake of the illusion increased as time went on. I repeat that I have not the slightest intention of arguing from certain conventions on the Chinese stage that they must have been identical in Elizabethan times. My point is simply that scholars ought not to assert that certain primitive conventions are “against the nature of the stage” or “contrary to human nature”, for this point of view is based on the current conventions with which the particular writer is acquainted. I should like to quote the concluding words of Doctor Albright’s thesis, spoken out of the depth of his experience of wrestling for years with the problems we are discussing. He calls an article by William Archer “one of the most original and enlightening articles on the Shakespearean stage that has yet appeared.” He says further about this writer, “As a learned dramatic critic of to-day, he approaches the Elizabethan stage with that special insight and ability which a closet student cannot hope to have. The stage and the staging have changed since the days of Shakespeare, but the mimic world is still the mimic world; and the deeper the scholar is grounded in the stage of to-day, the better he is qualified to study the stage of yesterday.” And, allow me to add, the knowledge of a living stage at a similar period of culture will likewise add to his qualifications to study the theater of the past.

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CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

B.C.

2705-2595 Huang Ti, mythological emperor.

2357-2206 Legendary sages to whose teachings Confucius harked back.

551 Birth of Confucius.

255-206 Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, the emperor who burned the books and built the Great Wall.

206 B.C. to 221 A.D. Han Dynasty—Recovery of literature—Introduction of Buddhism.

A.D.

221-265 The “Three Kingdoms”—Age of romantic chivalry.

618-906 The T’ang Dynasty—Emperor Ming Huang, traditional founder of the theater, and his consort Yang Kuei-fei, China’s most famous beauty. China was at this time the most civilized country in the world. Li Po and other great lyric poets.

960-1127 The Sung Dynasty—Development of landscape painting.

1280-1368 The Yuan or Mongol Dynasty—Classical age of Chinese drama. Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan. Marco Polo.

1368-1644 The Ming Dynasty—Restoration of Chinese rulers—Drama in the hands of scholars.

1644-1911 The Ch’ing or Manchu Dynasty—Emperors K’ang Hsi and Ch’ien Lung encourage arts and letters, including the theater.

1912- The Republic.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

History of the Drama under the Sung and Yuan Dynasties. Wang Kuo-wei. Commercial Press. Shanghai, 1915.

Not translated into any European language.

Théâtre Chinois, ou Choix de Pièces de Théâtre Composées sous les Empereurs Mongols. Bazin Ainé. Paris, 1838.

Four Yuan Dynasty plays translated by a French sinologue who was for years Professor of Chinese at the École des Langues Orientales.

Chine Moderne, ou Description Historique, Géographique, et Littéraire de ce vaste Empire, d’après des Documents Chinois. Paris, 1853.

In the second part of this volume M. Bazin gives numerous discussions of Chinese plays with summaries of their plots. Very valuable work.

Le Pi-Pa-Ki, ou L’Histoire du Luth. Traduit sur le texte original par M. Bazin Ainé. Paris, 1841.

Contains also a very good introduction to this important Ming drama.

L’Orphelin de la Chine. Drame en prose et en vers, accompagné des pièces historiques qui en ont fourni le sujet, de nouvelles et de poésies chinoises traduit de chinois par Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1834.

A complete translation by the famous French sinologue of the Yuan drama, The Orphan of the Chao Family. Voltaire made an abridged version by a Jesuit missionary the basis of his L’Orphelin de la Chine (1755), a stiff and artificial piece, presenting a Genghis Khan who falls in love in the manner of a French courtier of the 18th century.

L’Histoire du Cercle de Craie. Traduit du chinois par Stanislas Julien. London, 1832.

Translation of a Yuan drama.

The Sorrows of Han. Translated by John Francis Davis, F.R.S. London, 1829.

A Yuan drama translated by a British sinologue; The Fortunate Union, a Chinese romance, appears in the same volume.

Le Chagrin dans le Palais de Han. Louis Laloy. Publié par la Société littéraire de France. Paris, 1921.

M. Laloy’s version of this Yuan drama attempts to introduce some modern motivation. In his preface the author expresses the fear that in working over this Chinese tragedy “_il l’a défigurée en tachant de l’embellir_”, and perhaps his fears were justified.

La Chine Familière et Galante. Jules Arène. Paris, 1876.

In this volume by a French consul “_qui contient des détails fort curieux et intéressants sur les chinois, et surtout sur les chinoises_” are printed translations of four realistic comedies of popular life, “_sorte de vaudeville au gros sel, où, en gestes comme en paroles, la license chinoise se donne libre carrière_.” About ninety pages are devoted to the theater.

The Chinese Drama. William Stanton. Kelly and Walsh. Hongkong, 1899.

A British colonial official has translated three plays. The Willow Lute, The Golden-leafed Chrysanthemum, and The Sacrifice for the Soul of Ho Man Sau. In an introduction of eighteen pages the author discusses the types and conventions of the Chinese stage as seen in Hongkong and Canton. It is interesting to note that in general the southern theater is identical with that of Peking, but that there are some variations, particularly in customs and ceremonials.

Catching a Golden Tortoise.

Beating the Gold Bough.

Two Chinese plays translated by Charles Budd, Tung Wen Kuan Translation Office, Shanghai, 1913. Short and mildly interesting plays, translated partly for the purpose of aiding Chinese who wish to learn English.

Chinesische Schattenspiele. Übersetzt von Wilhelm Grube, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Berthold Laufer, Verlag der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. München, 1915.

A huge volume containing in translation the entire repertoire of a company of shadow players which Berthold Laufer, Curator of the Field Museum, had bought in Peking in 1901 and which were translated by the famous German sinologue. Though these plays are not presented on the stage, but recited by shadow players to accompany the movements of their puppets that cast shadows on a screen, yet the plots are the same as those of the theater. The book thus serves as a wonderful source for some one wishing to familiarize himself with Chinese plays. Berthold Laufer has prefaced the book with a meaty introduction.

Pekinger Volksleben. Wilhelm Grube. Berlin, 1901.

Sociological studies on popular customs and usages in Peking. A chapter is devoted to the theater in which numerous summaries of modern plays are given. The author also deals with related subjects: acrobats, story-tellers, annual ceremonies of guilds, etc.

Geschichte der chinesischen Litteratur. Wilhelm Grube. Leipzig, 1909.

Several chapters are devoted to the drama. Professor Grube, in his discussion of Yuan and Ming plays, is using Bazin’s translations, but in his evaluation of modern plays he is drawing on his long and intimate experience with the theater in Peking.

A History of Chinese literature. Herbert A. Giles. Heinemann, London.

This well-known sinologue devotes two chapters to the drama, but they are not up to the standard of the rest of this excellent work. Pi-Pa-Chi is the most modern drama he discusses.

Das Theater und Drama der Chinesen. Rudolf von Gottschall. Breslau, 1887.

This small volume of 209 pages was written by a minor German dramatist without first-hand knowledge of China. The author based his study upon French translations of older dramas. Yet the book is not lacking in remarks showing a keen insight into the Chinese character.

La Littérature Chinoise Contemporaine. Soong Tsung Faung, _Journal de Pékin_. Peking, 1919.

A volume by a professor of literature at the National University, Peking, in which his critical articles from Peking’s French paper are reprinted. Forty-seven pages are devoted to the theater under headings such as the following: “Origin of the Drama”, “Evolution of the Modern Chinese Theater”, “Ibsenism in China”, etc. Professor Soong follows to a certain extent Wang Kuo-wei’s History of the Drama under the Sung and Ming Dynasties. His thorough knowledge of the European stage enables him to make very striking comparisons.

Peking, A Social Survey. Sidney Gamble and Stewart J. Burgess. Doran, 1921.

The chapter “Recreations” in this interesting and painstaking survey presents statistics on the number of theaters, their locations, prices of admission, status of the actor and actress, etc.

En Chine, Mœurs et Institutions, Hommes et Faits. Maurice Courant. Paris, 1901.

The French diplomat devotes one chapter to the theater. He writes before the Revolution, but most things connected with the theater have been changed very little. He reports one abuse, however, which the Revolution (1912) abolished. Page 144: “_La prostitution féminine reste discrète, car la femme est toujours tenue à l’écart; mais la prostitution masculine s’étale au grand jour; il n’est guère de pàrtie de théâtre où l’amphitryon ne réunisse ses amis d’abord au restaurant et ne convie quelques jeunes garçons de bonne mine, richement habillés, sachant causer et ‘rendre le vin plus agréable’; ils plaisantent et rient avec les convives, les accompagnent au théâtre et restent avec eux jusqu’à ce que, la fête finie, chacun rentre chez soi. Naturellement, aux simples lettrés on ne demande que leur bonne humeur, et ce sont les riches qui paient la note; bien de fils de famille se ruinent de cette façon._”

The Yellow Jacket. A Chinese play done in the Chinese manner, in three acts, by George C. Hazelton and Benrimo. Bobbs-Merrill, 1913.

This play represents a unique example of Chinese influence producing a worth-while drama on our stage. Will Irwin was kind enough to write to me concerning its origin:

“... I can tell you the history of the play. Harry Benrimo, actor and stage-director, is a native of San Francisco. He saw much of the Chinese in California. His father was a contractor, employing Chinese labor and doing business with Chinese merchants. As a young actor, Benrimo became interested in the Chinese theaters of San Francisco. That was the golden age of the Chinese theater in America. The price of admission made the Jackson Street Company and the Washington Street Company rich on Chinese standards and they were able to get some great actors—just as the money from the Metropolitan Opera drew Caruso from Italy. Ah Chic, leading tragedian of the Jackson Street Company, was as great an actor as I ever saw.... Benrimo sketched out a scenario made not from any one Chinese play, but from a dozen—situations or bits of business or dialogue which he remembered from his old days in San Francisco theaters. Benrimo called into collaboration the late George Hazelton, playwright. On this scenario they worked out The Yellow Jacket.... Several Chinese, notably one man—name forgotten—from the Consulate helped with the rehearsals. Deliberately the authors took certain liberties with Chinese drama and psychology in order to make the play effective for an Occidental audience. Notably, they made the love of man for woman the main theme. One piece of business, I remember, caused endless dispute. It is where the happy and united lovers kiss. That would not happen, of course, with the Chinese. Benrimo understood that perfectly. But he said that an Occidental audience would expect it. And he had his way. I remember that whenever this piece of business occurred in the rehearsals, the man from the Consulate used to giggle.

“Lately I was talking over The Yellow Jacket with Percy Hammond, dramatic critic. ‘Do you know what made it a success?’ he said, ‘The Property Man as played by Shaw.’ Possibly he’s right about that. But the play served its artistic purpose. It made American audiences understand something of this extraordinary art. And I’ve no doubt but that if Hazelton and Benrimo had stuck close to the originals our audiences wouldn’t have understood half so well.”

So far as my experience goes, making love the main theme is not un-Chinese, but The Property Man as played on our stages is. Possibly Cantonese usage differs in this respect, but in Peking property men are always on the stage, coolies dressed in shabby blue cotton, but they are conspicuous only to the Westerner not used to Chinese conventions. They by no means have the importance attached to them in The Yellow Jacket. Compare the chapter, “External Aspects.”

The Chinese Drama. R. F. Johnston. Kelly & Walsh, 1921.

A slender volume that came to be written because the publishing firm had four paintings of Chinese actors which they wanted to issue in calendar form with a few words of comment from the well-known sinologue. Mr. Johnston became absorbed in the subject and wrote so much and so interestingly on it that Kelly & Walsh decided to make a book out of it. The text is much better than the pictures.

Le Théâtre Chinois. Chu Chia-chien. Paris, 1922.

The chief features of this book are the excellent paintings and sketches made in Peking theaters by the Russian artist, Alexandre Jacovleff. An English edition has been published by Putnam. No other book can give such a vivid notion of the real appearance as well as the spirit of the Chinese stage as this volume of inspired drawings. M. Chu Chia-chien, instructor in the École des Langues Orientales in Paris, writes well, but too briefly, on the conditions and conventions of the Chinese stage.

Chinesische Literatur. Eduard Erkes. Hirt, Breslau, 1924.

A brief, but up-to-the-minute sketch of Chinese literature. This volume by a University of Leipzig Privatdozent is one of a series on the literatures of various nations. The book came to me too late to include what it said on the origin of the theater in China in the text, and therefore I shall quote an interesting paragraph here. (The author speaks of the Pear Garden origin as a myth and says that the Chinese had a theater as early as other nations):

“_Es hat sich aus den bei festlichen Gelegenheiten aller Art, bei Krieg und Jagd, bei Opfer und Gelage, inszenierten Tänzen entwickelt, in denen man vorher im Spiel darstellte, was sich nachher zutragen sollte, um so auf magische Weise das Geschick günstig zu lenken, und nachher seiner Freude mimischen Ausdruck verlieh. Zu diesen Tänzen sang man Wechselgesänge mit Rede und Gegenrede, wie solche uns anscheinend aus mehreren Liedern des Schi-king erhalten sind, so dasz das China der Urzeit auch hierin das Leben anderer primitiver Völker geführt hat. Aus Südchina sind uns Texte solcher Dramen religiösen Charakters, wie sie auch K’üh Yüan im dritten Jahrhundert vor Christo bearbeitete, mehrfach überliefert, und bereits aus dem Jahre 545 v. Chr. haben wir eine Notiz nach der bei Tempelfesten, ganz ähnlich wie im alten Hellas, nach den ernsten Schaustellungen eine Burleske von den Stallknechten aufgeführt wurde. Das zeigt also, dasz die dramatische Kunst der Tang-Zeit nicht einen Anfang, sondern nur eine späte Etappe auf einem langen Wege bedeutet. Auch die Han-Zeit hatte ihre Singspiele, die bereits mit einem umfangreichen szenischen Apparat auf geführt wurden und vielleicht kompliziertere Bühneneinrichtungen voraussetzen lassen, als sie das heutzutage an Einfachheit unserer modernsten Schaubühne ebenbürtige—vielleicht für sie vorbildlich gewordene?—chinesische Theater jetzt bietet._” Pages 58-59.

Altchinesische Liebeskomödien, aus dem chinesischen Urtexte ausgewählt und übertragen von Hans Rudelsberger. Kunstverlag von Anton Schroll & Co. Wien, 1923.

Free translations of five comedies of love (among them two comedies discussed in this book on pages 33 and 96). The work is a splendid specimen of book-making with five colored illustrations by the Chinese artist Hua Mei-chai and numerous woodcuts from the original Chinese editions.

_Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society._

This very interesting journal, so far as I have been able to examine the files, contains only two articles on the theater: Volume XX, “Chinese Theatricals”, and Volume XXI, “Histrionic Notes.” Neither is very important.

This bibliography is by no means exhaustive. There are a great many articles not mentioned here, but they are generally not very instructive. In most cases they are written by travelers who note the obvious things about the Chinese theater. Naturally there is also a great deal of repetition in these writings.

FOOTNOTES

[1] As I find the Revised Version, with a fuller understanding of Oriental life, prefers to phrase it.

[2] Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1915.—A small volume of about 200 pages. Not translated into a European language.—The same author has issued a “Dramatical Catalogue”, same publishers, 1917.

[3] Quoted by De Groot, “Religious Systems of China”, vol. VI, p. 1187.

[4] The chief reason why theatricals are given at the village temples to-day is that they are public buildings with convenient stages. Not only religious but also secular plays are performed, sometimes vulgar and immoral ones. On the whole the moral standard of the Chinese stage is very high and must be called a good influence for the largely illiterate population. The worship at Chinese temples in the course of the religious festivals has the general character of a carnival with money changers, booths for eating and drinking, acrobats, magicians, beggars, gambling devices, etc.

[5] See Sir William Ridgeway, “The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races in Special Reference to the Origin of Greek Tragedy,” Cambridge University Press, 1915.

[6] Professor Porter calls my attention to the fact that Doctor Hu Shih calls these court jesters “sophists.” They were the ones to make the shrewdest observations among all courtiers. The suggestion of the revolutionary element probably accounts for the death sentence.

[7] _La Revue de Genève_, January, 1921.

[8] Note by Professor Porter: Mr. Wang develops his argument very well, using evidence from the odd foreign names of countries, localities and places. At the period it is known that there was extensive intercourse between Western countries and China along the northern and southern caravan routes.

[9] Page 257.

[10] The difficulty in acquiring a reading knowledge of the classical Chinese (Wen Li) does not consist chiefly in learning to read five thousand or more ideograms—that is only a minor trouble—but in the retention in the memory of the texts of the classics to which constant allusion is made in a manner to confuse utterly the uninitiated. “The dragon has gone down to the sea” means “the emperor has died.” Or to translate the idea into English; the Bible says, “The words of the wise are as goads” (Ecclesiastes xii, II) and Shakespeare (Hamlet V, I). “There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners”; therefore the reader would have to know that “goads” stands for the words of the wise and “ancient gentlemen” for gardeners. But connoisseurs regard this classical language as the greatest monument of China, far finer than Sung pottery or the Temple of Heaven. Said a friend to me one day, picking up a copy of Omar at the verse:

O Thou, who man of baser earth didst make, And didst with Paradise devise the snake, For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is blackened, man’s forgiveness give and take.

“Such is this wonderfully rich, poetic Wen Li, while in Pai Hua (the vernacular) this same thought would cover pages of dull, colorless prose.” Of course, the spoken language is still as poor a vehicle for poetic thought as Italian was before Dante, but its advocates hope for its growth and development.

[11] “Travels of Marco Polo”, Everyman Edition, Dutton and Company, page 186.

[12] The Chinese woman must as a child obey her father, as a wife her husband, and as a widow her son. The four wifely virtues are: (1) to honor and serve her mother-in-law; (2) to respect her husband; (3) to live in peace with her sisters-in-law; and (4) to have pity on the poor.

[13] See Bibliography.

[14] The Chinese name for the instrument is _chin_. Chinese writers on music have set down seven conditions under which one should not play the instrument: when one has just heard the news of a death; when some one is playing the flute in the vicinity; when one is oppressed by business cares; when one has not purified his body; when one is not wearing the ceremonial cap and gown; when one has not lighted sweet-smelling incense; and when there is not present a friend who understands music. Chancellor Tsai Yuan-pei, until 1923 the head of the National University in Peking, was a believer in training in æsthetics, and considered a proper appreciation of the music of the chin a most desirable element in the _mental equipment_ of a cultured man.

[15] Giles, “Chinese Literature”, page 155. “A poet should not dot his i’s. The Chinese reader likes to do that for himself, each according to his own fancy. Hence such a poem as the following, often quoted as a model in its own particular line:

“A tortoise I see on a lotus-flower resting: A bird mid the reeds and the rushes is nesting; A light skiff propelled by some boatman’s fair daughter, Whose song dies away o’er the fast-flowing water.”

[16] A most readable biography in English has just been published by the Commercial Press, Shanghai: “Yang Kuei-fei”, by Mrs. Wu Lien-teh.—In the _Mercure de France_, beginning August, 1922, there appeared a fascinating series of articles: “La Passion de Yang Kuei-fei”, by Soulie, translations of songs by blind Chinese singers woven into the story of the greatest Chinese tale of love.

[17] “The Jade Chaplet, A Collection of Songs, Ballads, etc., from the Chinese.” Trübner and Company, London, 1874.

[18] The Chinese actually say that the birds imitated her voice in their notes.

[19] One of the many complaints against Yang Kuei-fei was her fancy for fresh _Li-chihs_. She was so fond of these, that she had them, when in season, brought from the South to Ch’ang An daily, a distance of three thousand _li_. This apparently simple fancy was the cause of immense suffering, distress, and injustice; the messengers carrying the luxury, presuming on the protection of their mistress, committed all manner of depredation and violence.

[20] Yang Kuei-fei had intrigued with a noble named An Lu-shan, who afterwards raised the standard of rebellion, it is said, with the hope of obtaining possession of her. Be that as it may, the Emperor assembled a large army, and accompanied by Yang Kuei-fei, went to meet him. On arriving at a place called Ma-kuei in Sze-chuen, the Emperor’s troops mutinied, declaring that Yang Kuei-fei was the cause of the rebellion, and demanding her life, otherwise they would not fight. The Emperor, having no alternative, was forced to comply. Some say he ordered her to be strangled, and that this was done by the soldiers; others again, that she strangled herself—the latter appears the correct version.

[21] For similar practices among the Romans, see Sumner, “Folkways”, page 445.

[22] See also pages 91 and 92.

[23] See Bibliography, book by Arène, for examples.

[24] See outline, page 105.

[25] About a year after the earthquake Tokio’s Imperial Theater was reopened, and the Japanese honored Mei Lan-fang by engaging him for this occasion.

[26] This popular figure, called also “big stomach” or “cloth sack” Buddha, is laughing in anticipation of the happiness to come. His image is found in practically all Buddhist temples and frequently among the _bibelots_ collected by foreigners. In regard to the taste of collectors, Baron de Staël-Holstein, a Russian scholar versed in Buddhist lore, remarked to me one day, “The ugliest of all these figures is the one most sought after by Westerners.”

[27] See page 83_ff._

[28] See Haigh, “The Tragic Drama of the Greeks”, Oxford University Press; Murray, “Ancient Greek Literature”, Appleton, etc.—So far as I know no scholar has suggested that the goat did the singing of the “goat songs.”

[29] See “Sacred Books of the East”, vol. XXVIII, pp. 92-131.

[30] This has now come to an end. In October, 1924, the deposed emperor was driven out of his palace by the “Christian” General Feng Yu-hsiang.

[31] Thorndyke, “Shakespeare’s Theater”, Macmillan Company, page 139.

[32] _Ib._, page 87.

[33] Page 76.

[34] _Op. cit._, page 394.

[35] See Taine’s description, Book II, chapter II, in his “History of English Literature.”

[36] Page 261.—According to my friend Ferdinand Lessing, a German sinologist, Giles has here made a mistake. In Lessing’s words, Chinese plays contain “_faustdicke Zoten_.”

[37] “Shakespeare’s England,” II, 308_ff._

[38] Quoted from “Shakespeare’s England”, II, 246. See also Thorndyke’s “Shakespeare’s Theater”, page 372.

[39] Goethe, “Frauenrollen auf dem römischen Theater von Männern gespielt.”

[40] “Shakespeare’s England”, page 252_ff._

[41] “Shakespeare’s England”, II, 241.

[42] Thorndyke, page 138, refers to this article, but takes no stock in Mr. Corbin’s arguments. He says that darkness was symbolized by lighted candles, etc., which is precisely the thing done on the Chinese stage.

[43] “Shakespeare’s England”, II, 301.

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INDEX

[The names of Chinese dramas are printed in italics]

Albright, Victor, 201, 216, 217, 218

Amateurs, 109

Archer, William, 217, 219

_Autumn in the House of Han._ _See_ SORROWS OF HAN

Bakst, Leon, 214

Bazin, A. P. L., 4

_Beating the Heartless Husband_, 90

_Beating the Nephew and Worshiping at the Grave_, 87

_Blood-Stained Fan, The_, 70

Brodmeier, Professor, 217

_Burying the Flowers_, 80, 179

_Butchering the Pig_, 168

_Chalk Circle, The_, 32

Ch’ang An, 3, 15, 48, 50, 74

Chang Chien, Mr., 113

_Ch’ang-O’s Flight to the Moon_, 104 _ff._, 159

_Ch’ang-O Pin Yüeh._ _See_ CH’ANG-O’S FLIGHT TO THE MOON

Ch’ang Shan Tien. _See_ PALACE OF ETERNAL LIFE

Chang Yao-shang, actor, 15

Chang Ziang-ling, 142

_Chao Chia Ku-er._ _See_ ORPHAN OF THE CHAO FAMILY

_Chao Mei Hsiang._ _See_ INTRIGUES OF A LADY’S MAID

Chao Tsung, Emperor, 15

Character Types, 25, 112, 149, 151, 152, 153, 175

Chen Kwang Theater, 181

_Ch’i San Hui._ _See_ THREE STRANGE MEETINGS

Ch’ien Lung, Emperor, 69

_Ch’ing Shang Lao Shüeh._ _See_ SLAVE GIRL PLAYS TRICKS ON THE OLD SCHOOLMASTER

Ch’ing Shih Shan, 194

_Chu Fang Tsao._ _See_ BUTCHERING THE PIG

_Chu Sha Chü._ _See_ CINNABAR SPOT, A

Chu Su-yün, actor, 83, 86

_Chü T’eng Kuan Hua._ _See_ TRIAL OF STRENGTH AND VIEWING THE ANCESTRAL PORTRAITS

Chu Yuan-chang. _See_ HUNG WU

_Ch’un Yin Hui._ _See_ MEETING OF MANY HEROES

_Cinnabar Spot, A_, 88

Civil Plays, 10, 146

Classical Language. _See_ WEN LI

Clowns, 23, 25, 153, 207. _Cf._ COURT FOOLS

Commedia dell’ Arte, 16

Confucius, 10, 17, 25, 28, 49

Corbin, John, 215

Coryat, Thomas, 208

Court Fool, Yu Meng, 12 Yu Sze, 12

Court Fools, 11, 12, 15, 16. _Cf._ CLOWNS

Craig, Gordon, 214

_Crossing the Milky Way_, 159, 194

Dances, Dramatic, 6

Dottore. _See_ COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE

Dream of the Red Chamber, The, 80, 93, 188

_Drunkard_, 13

Duke Lan Lu, 13

Dwarfs, 11, 13. _Cf._ COURT FOOLS

Elizabethan Theater, 25, 133, 194 _ff._

Empress Dowager, 188

Fan Kuai, 15

Feng Yu-hsiang, General, 195

Fools, Court. _See_ COURT FOOLS

Gamble, Sidney, 133, 144

Giles, Herbert, 18, 59, 80, 180, 207

Goodrich, Mrs., 104

_Greatest Event in Life, The_, 119 _ff._

Greek Theater, 10, 192 _ff._

Grube, Wilhelm, 80

Han Hsi-ch’ang, actor, 140

_Han Kung Tsu._ _See_ SORROWS OF HAN

Han Lin Academy, 4, 43

Harlequin. _See_ COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE

_Ho Lan-chi._ _See_ CHALK CIRCLE, THE

_Ho Lang Tan._ _See_ SINGING GIRL, THE

Ho Yi, Emperor, 105

_Hsi Hsiang Chi._ _See_ WESTERN CHAMBER, THE

Hsien, 7, 11

_Hsü Mu Ma Tsao._ _See_ HSÜ’S MOTHER CURSES TSAO TSAO

_Hsü’s Mother Curses Tsao Tsao_, 81

Hu Shih, 11, 21, 22, 74, 78, 117, 198

Hung Lou Meng. _See_ DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, THE

Hung Sen, author, 70

Hung Wu, Emperor, 43

Intrigue of a Lady’s Maid, 26

I-Yin, 7

Jade Palace, 3

Jen Tsung, Emperor, 43

Jesters. _See_ COURT FOOLS

Jung Tu-shan, 113, 115

_K’an Tsien Wu._ _See_ MISER, THE

K’ang Hsi, Emperor, 69, 182

Kuan Han-ching, dramatist, 23

Kuan Yin, 99

Kublai Khan, 19

_Kung Chuan Chi._ _See_ RUSE OF THE EMPTY CITY

Kung Shang-jen, author, 70

Lao Tze, 28

Laufer, Berthold, 10, 11, 99

Lessing, Ferdinand, 207

Li Fang-yün, 137

Li Shou-shan, actor, 83

Li Yuan Tzu-ti, 3

Liao Chai. _See_ STRANGE STORIES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO

Literary Language. _See_ WEN LI

Liu Ming-ju, 135

Liu Yen Ming, 96

Marco Polo, 23, 41

_Mask, The_, 13, 14

_Meeting of Many Heroes, The_, 82

Mei Lan-fang, Chapter VIII; 80, 83, 84, 86, 98, 104, 105, 110, 118, 138, 142, 143, 145, 150, 151, 152, 155, 157, 159, 206, 211

Mencius, 17, 28

Military Plays, 10, 13, 77, 79, 146

Ming Huang (Yuen Tsung), Emperor, 3, 70, 135, 181

_Miser, The_, 35 _ff._

_Mu Lan_, 185, 201, 212

Music, Types of, 142, 147, 191 _ff._

Musical Instruments, 148 _ff._, 192

_New Mayor, The_, 115

New World, 132, 143

_Ngoh Chia Chuan._ _See_ NGOH FAMILY VILLAGE

_Ngoh Family Village_, 87

Orphan of the Chao Family, The, 37, 94

_Pai Hua_, 21, 22

Palace of Eternal Life, 4, 70

_Pang Ta Poo Ching Lang._ _See_ BEATING THE HEARTLESS HUSBAND

Pantalone. _See_ COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE

Pantomimes, 6

_Pavilion of the Royal Monument_, 184

Pear Garden, 3, 18, 135

_Pi Pa Chi._ _See_ STORY OF A LUTE

P’iao Yu. _See_ AMATEURS

Plays, Types of, 146 _ff._, 197

_Po She Chuan._ _See_ WHITE AND BLACK SNAKES, THE

Porter, Lucius, 11, 14

Precious Hairpin, The, 93

Reinhardt, Max, 214

Ridgeway, Professor William, 9, 10

_Ruse of the Empty City, The_, 80

_Ruse of the Nail, The_, 157

San Kuo Chi. _See_ THREE KINGDOMS, THE

_San Yao Hui._ _See_ SHAKING DICE

Scapino. _See_ COMMEDIA DELL’ ARTE

Seasonal Plays, 104 _ff._, 159, 194

_Seeing the Ancestral Portraits._ _See_ TRIAL OF STRENGTH

_Shaking Dice_, 98

_Sha Tze Pao._ _See_ SLAYING THE SON

_Shang Ting Chi._ _See_ RUSE OF THE NAIL

Shih Hu. _See_ HU SHIH

Shih Wang-ti, Emperor, 12

Shui Hu Chuan. _See_ STORY OF A RIVER BANK

_Singing Girl, The_, 29

_Slave Girl Plays Tricks on the Old Schoolmaster, The_, 183

_Slaying of the Son_, 158

Smith, Doctor Arthur H., 66, 68

_Snow in June._ _See_ SUFFERINGS OF TOU-E

Soong Tsung-faung, author, 12, 117, 118

Sophists. _See_ COURT FOOLS

_Sorrowful Korean, The_, 114

_Sorrows of Han_, 37

Spring Willow Dramatic Society, 112

_Ssu Pao-pi._ _See_ DRUNKARD, THE

Stäel Holstein, Baron de, 179

Stanton, William, 4, 159

Stent, George Carter, 71

Stephenson, Professor H. T., 214, 215

_Story of a Lute._ _See_ CHAPTER III

Story of the River Bank, 79

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, 80

Suen Lo Ngao, 12

_Sufferings of Tou-E_, 23, 39, 142

_Ta Chih Shang Wen._ _See_ BEATING THE NEPHEW

_Ta Yin Ho._ _See_ CROSSING THE MILKY WAY

_Tai Yü Chuan Hua._ _See_ BURYING THE FLOWERS

Taine, H., 205

T’an Shen-pei, actor, 149, 188

T’an Shoo-shan, actor, 150

_T’ao Hua Shan._ _See_ BLOOD-STAINED FAN, THE

Taoism, 34

Teh Hing, actor, 152

Theater. _See_ ELIZABETHAN THEATER; GREEK THEATER

Thorndyke, Professor A. H., 198, 203, 208

Three Kingdoms, The, 78, 79, 80

_Three Pulls._ _See_ THREE STRANGE MEETINGS

_Three Strange Meetings_, 83, 180

_Tiger, The_, 14

T’ing Hua, critic, 154

_Tou-E._ _See_ SUFFERINGS OF TOU-E

_Transmigration of You Hsin_, 33

_Trial of Strength and Viewing the Ancestral Portraits_, 94, 183

Tsai Yuan-pei, 58

Tung Lo Yuan, 140

Types of Character. _See_ CHARACTER TYPES

Types of Music. _See_ MUSIC, TYPES OF

Types of Plays. _See_ PLAYS, TYPES OF

Vernacular. _See_ PAI HUA

Wang Kuo-wei, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 23

Wen Li, 20, 21

_Western Chamber, The_, 24

_White and Black Snakes, The_, 100

Wu, 7, 11

Wu Lien-teh, Mrs., 71

Wu Wang, Empress, 7

Yang Kuei-fei, 4, 70, 71, 72 _ff._, 159, 181 _ff._

_Yang Kuei-fei on a Spree_, 157, 181

_Yang Kuei-fei Tsui Chou._ _See_ YANG KUEI-FEI ON A SPREE

Yang Shiao-lo, actor, 138, 151, 155

_Yellow Jacket, The_, 170, 200, 216

_Yi Tsai Hua_, 111

Yo Fei, 91, 92, 134

_Young Nun Seeks Love, A_, 178

_Yü Chan Chih._ _See_ PRECIOUS HAIRPIN, A

Yu Meng, Court Fool, 12

_Yü Pei T’ing._ _See_ PAVILION OF THE ROYAL MONUMENT

Yü San-yen, actor, 150

Yü Sze, Court Fool, 12

Yuen Tsung. _See_ MING HUANG

Yung Lo, Emperor, 47