[Exeunt.
Enter Gatekeeper and Beggar.
Gatekeeper. Only one poor beggar now remains within the hall,
Who’d have thought that this poor vagrant would have got the Ball?
[To P‘ing Kuei.] Sir, you’ve come off well this morning:
You must be a lucky man.
Come with me to claim your bride, and
Make the greatest haste you can.
[Exeunt.
Even the longer and more elaborate plays are proportionately wanting in all that makes the drama piquant to a European, and are very seldom, if ever, produced as they stand in print. Many collections of these have been published, not to mention the acting editions of each play, which can be bought at any bookstall for something like three a penny. One of the best of such collections is the Yüan ch‘ü hsüan tsa chi, or Miscellaneous Selection of Mongol Plays, bound up in eight thick volumes. It contains one hundred plays in all, with an illustration to each, according to the edition of 1615. A large proportion of these cannot be assigned to any author, and are therefore marked “anonymous.” Even when the authors’ names are given, they represent men altogether unknown in what the Chinese call literature, from which the drama is rigorously excluded.
CHI CHÜN-HSIANG
The following is a brief outline of a very well known play in five acts by Chi Chün-hsiang, entitled “The Orphan of the Chao family,” and founded closely upon fact. It is the nearest approach which the Chinese have made to genuine tragedy:—
A wicked Minister of the sixth century B.C. plotted the destruction of a rival named Chao Tun, and of all his family. He tells in the prologue how he had vainly trained a fierce dog to kill his rival, by keeping it for days without food and then setting it at a dummy, dressed to represent his intended victim, and stuffed with the heart and lights of a sheep. Ultimately, however, he had managed to get rid of all the male members of the family, to the number of three hundred, when he hears—and at this point the play proper begins—that the wife of the last representative has given birth to a son. He promptly sends to find the child, which had meanwhile been carried away to a place of safety. Then a faithful servant of the family hid himself on the hills with another child, while an accomplice informed the Minister where the supposed orphan of the house of Chao was lying hidden. The child was accordingly slain, and by the hand of the Minister himself; the servant committed suicide. But the real heir escaped, and when he grew up he avenged the wrongs of his family by killing the cruel Minister and utterly exterminating his race.
From beginning to end of this and similar plays there is apparently no attempt whatever at passion or pathos in the language—at any rate, not in the sense in which those terms are understood by us. Nor are there even rhetorical flowers to disguise the expression of commonplace thought. The Chinese actor can do a great deal with such a text; the translator, nothing. There is much, too, of a primitive character in the setting of the play. Explanatory prologues are common, and actors usually begin by announcing their own names and further clearing the way for the benefit of the audience. The following story will give a faint idea of the license conceded to the play-actor.