The Chinese theater

by A. E. Zucker

According to legendary stories the Herdsman and Spinning Damsel are two lovers who each inhabit a star separated by the Silver River (the Milky Way) and are unable to meet except on the seventh night of the seventh moon, when magpies from all parts of the world assemble, and with their linked bodies form a bridge to enable the damsel to cross to her lover. Consequently this is one of the great festive occasions of China. On the said evening of A.D. 735, Yuen Tsung and his celebrated consort stood gazing into the starlit sky. Remembering the occasion Yang Kuei-fei burst into protestations of affection and assured the monarch that she was more faithful than the Spinning Damsel, for that she would never leave him, but, inseparably with him, tread the spiritual walks of eternity. In order to reward such love the emperor sought to discover a novel amusement for her. After consideration he summoned his prime minister and commanded him to select a number of young children, and, after carefully instructing and handsomely dressing them, to bring them before the beautiful Yang Kuei-fei, to recite for her delectation the heroic achievements of his ancestors. That was the origin of the drama in China. The first performances were generally held in a pavilion in the open air, among fruit trees, and Yuen Tsung subsequently established an Imperial Dramatic College in a pear garden, where hundreds of male and female performers were trained to afford him pleasure. From the site of the college the actors become known as the “Young Folks of the Pear Garden”, a title they claim to the present day.

The Pear Garden origin of the Chinese drama is a fine legend and heroic history, but it is typical of Chinese who have come in touch with Occidental science that they should search for a more realistic, if less picturesque, account of the beginning of their theater. The first, and so far the only, systematic and scientific work on this subject is “The History of the Drama under the Sung and Yuan Dynasties”, by Mr. Wang Kuo-wei.[2] This author has taken great pains in collecting all evidences of pantomimes, dramatic dances, satirical buffoonery, or anything else to which the roots of a theater might be traced. While he is not yet able on the basis of his evidence to lead us back step by step to the genesis of the theater—as could for example a scholar dealing with the Greek drama—yet the evidence he adduces is most interesting.

About 2000 B.C. there were found mediums called wu when they were women or hsien when men, who performed dances and sang songs in the worship of the gods, to exorcise evil spirits, to induce the gods to send rain, or to act as mourners in times of calamity. It was believed that the gods descended to earth and communicated with men through these mysterious beings, especially in the course of violent dances. This form of worship designed for the pleasure of the gods was evidently much according to the taste of men, for we find it such a widespread form of popular amusement that I-Yin, famous minister of the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.), issued an edict prohibiting it. “The late sovereign instituted punishments for the officers, and warned the men in authority, saying, ‘If you dare to have constant dancing in your mansions, and drunken singing in your houses, I call it wu-fashion’.”[3] During the classical Chou Dynasty, beginning 1122 B.C. with Wu Wang, everything in Chinese life was cast into the fetters of a strict ritual. There were regulations governing the dress to be worn, the speeches to be made, and the postures to be assumed on all possible occasions, whether at the court or in private life; in fact, these rules were the prototypes of most of the characteristic features governing Chinese public and social life down to the present day. It can be seen readily that the more or less spontaneous and popular mimicry of the wu (mediums) would naturally enough be suppressed at this time; but in later dynasties we find again many references to the beauty, the splendid costumes, the singing and dancing, and in general the charm of these actors in popular religious ceremonies.

These performances of the early Chinese centered about the divine worship, as everything of æsthetic nature in the life of primitive man seems to do. Even to-day all of the theatrical performances in China outside the large cities are a form of divine worship, usually harvest festivals staged by way of thanksgiving for good crops. That there is in the minds of the Chinese a definite religious association with theatricals performed in the villages is shown by the fact that the Christian converts always receive a dispensation for their share of the sum demanded by the traveling company. Sometimes missionaries hear complaints from the village elders that some thrifty members of their flocks save the tax for theatricals and yet go to look on at the shows; however, thanks to the reasonable and unfanatic character of the Chinese such quarrels are usually easily adjusted.

Because of this close association of the theater with temple worship,[4] it seems reasonable to seek for another possible origin of the drama in the early ancestor worship in which the deceased forefather of the family was impersonated by one of his descendants. A ceremony of honoring a revered ancestor could easily be expanded into a representation of his great deeds. It is also known that not only men but also gods were impersonated by the actors; as Mr. Wang puts it, they dressed in the attire of the gods and imitated their gestures. However, in regard to these representations of the gods our author feels that it is impossible to give any definite details. Yet in the verse of the time there are allusions to these performances referring to extravagance in dress and in articles of toilet, such as perfume; to a change in the style of music; to the employment of themes of love or of sadness in parting—all of which indicates the great popularity of these entertainments of singing or dancing. Hence our Chinese scholar believes that out of these beginnings the drama has grown.

In this connection it would seem proper to mention the work of the Cambridge University scholar, Professor William Ridgeway. He holds that Greek tragedy proper did not arise in the worship of the Thracian god Dionysus; but that it sprang out of the indigenous worship of the dead, especially dead chiefs who in some cases are later deified.[5] In dramatic dances in honor of ancestors or deceased heroes in Asiatic countries Professor Ridgeway finds support for his theory of the origin of the Greek theater. Speaking of the Chinese theater, he says that already in the time of Confucius certain solemn dances were held in the ancestral temples; at the present time in the temples of local deities, who were once heroes or heroines of the immediate neighborhood, dramatic performances are held in which these deified heroes are supposed to take an interest for the reason that they are themselves frequently the object of the worship; and that these modern theatricals seem to be descended directly from the ancient cult practiced five hundred years before Christ. It would seem from the foregoing that Mr. Wang’s evidence gives support to Professor Ridgeway’s theories of the origin of tragedy out of the worship of deified heroes.

Doctor Berthold Laufer, curator of the Field Museum, Chicago, has stated to me that in his opinion a discussion of the origin of the Chinese drama ought to differentiate between the beginnings of the “military plays” and the “civil plays.” The latter are, as will be explained more fully in a later chapter, plays in our sense of the word, while the “military plays” consist of acrobatics that symbolize fighting. Doctor Laufer believes that these last-named take their origin from ancient ceremonials in which the use of weapons was the chief feature. Doctor Laufer has had considerable experience with the Chinese theater, and his museum is the only one in the world, so far as I know, which possesses life-size figures of Chinese actors in correct costume.

So much for ancestor worship as the source of the drama with the wu or hsien. Mr. Wang adduces records also of other types of actors. As early as 1818 B.C., according to a none too reliable Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-221 A.D.) record, a ruler is said to have abolished the temple rites and ceremonies and to have collected about his court clowns, dwarfs, and actors to perform amusing plays. In the more historic period of “Spring and Autumn” (770-544 B.C.) there are records of dwarfs in rôles similar to those of our court fools. They attempted to gain the favor of the rulers by their witty sayings which were often full of satire. Confucius in his capacity of prime minister saw himself forced to put to death one of these wits[6] because of his disrespectful allusions to the ruler—an action, incidentally, that seems most characteristic of the noble sage, who with all his virtues certainly was not endowed with a sense of humor. The function of these dancing, singing, play-acting dwarfs was not a religious one; “they were to amuse men, not to amuse the gods.”

In a review[7] of Mr. Wang’s “History of the Drama under the Sung and Yuan Dynasties” Professor Soong calls attention to the following interesting analogies between Orient and Occident: