This obtrusively moral ending is a sine qua non in Chinese plays; likewise the crude plot as well as the rôle played by accident rather mar one’s enjoyment of the play. Yet the courage of the girl in the face of her persecutors, her firm belief that justice will prevail in the end, and her stoical manner of meeting death are elements not without their charm. The scene of the execution is rather impressive in its simplicity.
Tou-E: (sings) Ye clouds that float in the air on my account, make dark the sky! Ye winds that sigh because of my fate, come down in storms! Oh, that Heaven would make my three predictions come true!
Mother-in-law: Rest assured that snow will fall for six months, and that a drought will afflict the country for three years.
Now, Tou-E, let your soul reveal clearly the great injustice which is about to cause your death.
(The executioner strikes off Tou-E’s head).
The Judge (seized with terror): O Heavens! The snow is beginning to fall! This is surely a miracle!
Executioner: I behead criminals every day and their blood always flows on the ground, but the blood of Tou-E has spotted the two banners of white silk and not a drop has fallen on the ground. There is something supernatural about this catastrophe.
The Judge: This woman was truly innocent!
The plays discussed in this chapter are sufficient to show that in the thirteenth century the Chinese possessed a theater of fair merit. To be sure, the technique is extremely crude; characters on their first appearance on the stage tell the audience their names followed by a conscientious account of their past lives and the part to be played by them in the drama; the motivation of the actions is very poor; many plays seem to be dramatized narratives rather than real dramas; there is a great paucity of invention as shown by the rather frequent repetition of dramatic devices and motives; the necessity of having a moral ending leads to numerous absurdities; and chance rules the playwright’s world from beginning to end, always in the interest of the good. Furthermore, there is lacking a real sense of the tragic; there are no sublime heroes overcome by the universal human limitations which they challenge, nor are there moral conflicts of an elevating nature in which poetic justice triumphs. The characters are in general types rather than individuals, and there is very little deep psychological insight displayed. And on the whole it must be said, the plays do not rise to a very high spiritual level. Yet there is great charm in this drama which brings on the stage characters of all sorts from emperors down to coolies, and displays in full the rich life in the Middle Kingdom of the days when Marco Polo described it.