Jing Shen

Kong Shangren (1648-1718) was a sixty-fourth-generation descendant of Confucius. Impressed by his lecture on the Confucian classics, the Manchu emperor Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) granted him an official position in Beijing. During his tenure of office, he completed a chuanqi play titled The Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan), which created a sensation at the time. Peach Blossom Fan interweaves a love story with an account of factional strife to present a critical and grieving reflection on the fall of the Han Chinese Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It stands out among historical plays in Chinese dramatic literature for its careful composition and complex profundity and has inspired many adaptations. This chapter examines its comprehensive evaluation of the roles taken by historical personalities in the last years of the dynasty and its regional continuation in the Southern Ming (1644-1645), through the medium of romantic chuanqi drama. This masterpiece demonstrates that Kong Shangren's experiment with the dramatic and musical form also enabled him to negotiate between history and interpretation.

"A Couple of Soles is a classic comedic romance by the seventeenth-century playwright Li Yu. Tan Chuyu, a poor young scholar, falls in love with the beautiful actress Liu Miaogu. He joins her family's acting troupe, and, in plays within the play, romance ensues. After Liu's family attempts to marry her off to a local country squire, she performs a famous scene in which a heroine drowns herself--and then jumps off the stage into a river, followed by Tan. The local river deity rescues the lovers from death by transforming them into a pair of soles. Li balances their romance with the adventures of a retired upright official involving banditry, bribery, and mistaken identity--and who nets and shelters the two fish when they regain human form. Written at a time when China was beginning to recover from the cataclysmic Ming-Qing dynastic transition, A Couple of Soles displays Li's biting wit as well as his reflections on the concerns of his age, including the dangers of administrative service and the role of theater in society. The play combines witty wordplay and caustic satire with a strong emphasis on traditional moral values. The first major comedy from late imperial China to appear in English translation, A Couple of Soles provides an unparalleled view of the theater in seventeenth-century China."--