“Since we have an ax, why should I bother the neighbor?”
“Perhaps you don’t know that my bones are extremely hard, and that if you’d use my good cutting edge you’d have to spend some coppers to get it resharpened.”
The miser’s last words are inaudible, but he persists in holding up two fingers. All the relatives assembled in the death chamber are very much puzzled and try to please him by doing this or that, but the dying man’s discomfort increases. Finally his old servant enters and he understands. There are two candles burning where one might do; and after one of them has been extinguished the miser dies in peace.
Tragedy is not found in the Chinese drama. The plays abound in sad situations, but there is none that by its nobility or sublimity would deserve to be called tragic. The closest approach to it is found perhaps in “The Orphan of the Chao Family”,[13] made familiar to Western readers by Voltaire; or in “The Sorrows of Han.” This latter play, in the Chinese literally “Autumn in the House of Han”, is full of poetical touches. North of the Great Wall there is the Tartar Khan who sees in the weakness of the Han emperor his opportunity for further conquest. This young emperor is addicted to a life of dissipation, and through his minister Mao he gathers beauties for his harem from the four corners of his realm. As a true Oriental, Mao demands a heavy bribe from the family of every girl whose portrait he submits to the emperor. But the family of the most beautiful girl of all is so poor as to be unable to pay a bribe, and therefore the minister causes the artist to distort the portrait. Naturally the emperor does not summon this lady into his presence. But one evening, when in a melancholy mood he walks in an unfrequented part of his palace grounds, he comes by chance upon this girl as she is singing to her lute. Her beauty enchants him. “The very lantern shines brighter in the presence of this maid,” he exclaims, and falls violently in love with her. Of course, he orders the grasping minister to be beheaded; but the latter flees to the Tartar Khan to show him a truthful picture of the favorite and to incite him to war against China.
The Khan sends an ultimatum: “Either give me this beauty for a wife or I will make war on China.” The emperor is aghast with fear of a Tartar invasion, but the princess is willing to be sacrificed. “In return for your bounties it is your handmaiden’s duty to brave death for you,” she says and adds that surpassing beauty has always been coupled with great sorrow, but that she will leave a name ever green in history. After a sad farewell she departs for the country of the Tartars and meets the Khan on the banks of the Amur. She drinks a last cup of wine to her lover: “Emperor of Han, this life is ended. I await thee in the next.” With these words the princess casts herself into the swift current and drowns in spite of the Khan’s valiant effort to save her. He erects for her a tomb on the bank of the river, which tradition says is green both summer and winter. Moved by her noble character, the Tartar decides to live in peace with China.
ILLUSTRATION BY A CHINESE ARTIST. TOU-E BEFORE THE JUDGE
A play that is even to-day a favorite in Peking playhouses under the title of “Snow in June” was called by its Yuan dynasty author “The Sufferings of Tou-E.” It is the record of the endless sufferings at the hands of a pitch-black, wicked world of an innocent girl and her final vindication through a triple miracle from Heaven. In her childhood she was sold by her own father into a family where she became the son’s wife and the drudge of her mother-in-law. For thirteen years she was a dutiful wife and when her husband died she hoped to remain faithful to his memory, as every widow in China is expected to do. But two cowardly ruffians, father and son, force themselves into the house where she is living with her likewise widowed mother-in-law and demand that the women marry them, endowing them at the same time with all their worldly goods. The two women refuse to yield to these insolent demands. Then the younger intruder, or rather bandit, places some poison in a bowl of soup, intending to murder the older woman, but his father drains the cup by mistake. Hereupon he tries once more to coerce the heroine into marriage by threatening to fasten the murder upon her. She feels quite secure in her innocence and dares him to bring the case to court, very certain in the belief that justice will prevail. But the wicked judge begins by having the accused tortured, and this so brutally that the girl is at last forced into a false confession merely to escape the unbearable pain. Upon this she is promptly condemned to death. As she is kneeling to be beheaded she announces that three things will prove her innocence; her blood will not fall on the ground but on a banner ten feet above her head; snow will fall although the season is summer; and there will be a drought of three years’ duration. All of this comes true as it had been foretold, and the strange tale is noised abroad in the land. Finally, a just judge—her very father who as a poor scholar had been forced to sell his child!—hears of the case and decides to investigate it. The spirit of his daughter comes to enlighten him in regard to the true state of affairs, and the real murderer is punished by being nailed to a wooden ass and cut into a hundred and twenty pieces.
ILLUSTRATION BY A CHINESE ARTIST. TOU-E ABOUT TO BE BEHEADED