Arts Lib. PL 2931 B96s A A ! 1 ! 1 ! 2 j 4 ! 4 I 4 I 5 I Studies in THE CHINESE DRAMA By KATE BUSS THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES From the Estate of Urie McCleary ONE THOUSAND COPIES ONLY OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN PRINTED ON OLDE STYLE BOOK PAPER AND THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY MDCCCCXXII. THIS IS NUMBER STUDIES IN THE CHINESE DRAMA •» WOMEN, AS WELL AS MEN, HAVE BEEN SOLDIERS IN CHINA. THIS PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS MEI LAN-FANG— THE MOST CELEBRATED CHINESE ACTOR OF TODAY— AS A FEMININE WARRIOR Studies in THE CHINESE DRAMA By KATE BUSS Boston The Four Seas Company 1922 Copyright, 1922, by THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY The Four Seas Press Boston, Mass., U. S. A. ARTS To C. H. B. and C. B. B. "Without error there could be no such thing as truth.'' CHINESE PROVERB Contents Chapter Page I. Origin of the Chinese Drama . . .15 II. Types of Plays 20 III. The Plays as Literature .... 27 IV. Religious Influence upon the Drama 36 V. Types and Characters 41 VI. The Actors 46 VII. The Music 53 VIII. Decoration, Costume, and Symbolic Design 61 IX. Customs of the Playhouse and the Greenroom 71 Illustrations Page Mei Lan-fang, Celebrated Chinese Actor of Today frontispiece The Great Monad 13 The Theatre God 14 Scene from an Event in the Sung Dynasty 16 Figures from a Play of the Tai-ping Rebel- lion 20 God of Agriculture 24 Mei Lan-fang in Costume 30 Three Chinese Actors in Costume .... 34 Meditation — a Buddhist Exercise .... 38 Trio of Actors in an Historical Scene from the Wei Dynasty 40 Two Male Actors in Costume 42 Program of a Theatre in Peking, 1920 ... 44 A Portrait of Mei Lan-fang 48 ILLUSTRATIONS Page Strolling Musicians 50 Strolling Mountebank with Monkey ... 52 Bamboo Kouan 54 Chinese Guitar 56 Hou K'in, or Two-String Violin .... 60 Mei Lan-fang in the Costume of an Ancient Warrior 62 Chinese Symbol for Age 64 Symbol for Happiness 64 The Five-clawed Imperial Dragon .... 66 Lei Shen, the Thunder God 68 Kuan Ti, God of War 70 A Permanent Theatre in Peking, Estab- lished During the Ming Dynasty . 72. A Temporary Theatre, of Mats and Bamboo . 74 A Movable Stage 76 Introduction IT is to be supposed that a republican gov- ernment in China will interrupt the Imperial drama convention. Historically the Imperial theatre ended with the dissolution of the Ching dynasty nine years ago, but the tradition which has maintained it during the last six hundred years is powerful enough to have continued it to the present hour as the popular contemporary theatre, and, in most parts of the country, as the only type of dramatic production. Recent deviations in a few minor theatres are as yet transitory and without focus. This book is concerned solely with the Imperial drama. It is compiled from widely scattered texts and illustrations; and is intended to be commen- tarial rather than analytical. I desire to thank Dr. John C. Ferguson, Professor Edward S. Morse, Mr. Shen Hung, Mr. Y. Wong, and Mr. Aram Antranikian for assistance in obtaining notes and illustrations. When scores of dramatists present a contem- porary or a traditional people it is inevitable that 11 12 INTRODUCTION they present a considerable degree of fact. Chi- nese plays and the Chinese drama intrigue the mind and invite the Occidental to their study for the historical, civil, and spiritual reflection of forty centuries of civilization, and for the cere- monious and enduring conventions they reveal. To understand is the dilemma! Many for- eigners have visited Chinese theatres: heard the "clamour" of music that is unfamiliar both in interval and orchestration, listened to a strange language and looked upon fantastic costumery, to write a lot of nonsense about the Chinese stage ; they have not been able to separate opposing tra- ditions — and it is they who have shrouded Chinese splendour in incorrect adjectives. The Chinese drama must be judged by native standards. Unlike her Nipponese neighbour, China is not a borrowing nation. Her arts of painting, calligraphy, literature, the theatre, et cetera, are indigenous, and can be received in their proper magnificence only when disassociated from the theories that control Western arts, from which they differ in purpose, in thesis, and in exposition. KATE BUSS Paris October 1921 STUDIES IN THE CHINESE DRAMA € The Grea/ Mo /73a/ T/?ej/re God THE THEATRE GOD USUALLY RESEMBLES THE EIGHTH CENTURY EMPEROR. MING HUANG CHAPTER I Origin of the Chinese Drama THE birth year of the Chinese drama is unknown. Dates are variously suggested and disagreed upon and enclose a period of more than twenty-five centuries. The reason for this divergence of opinion is that while one writer considers the pantomimic dances — for re- ligious worship or military jubilation — which were presented to musical accompaniment, a dramatic production, another waits to name the century of the initial stage performance until festival rites unite with speech in dramatic situation and an histrionic denouement; or, one studies drama from the assumption of the aesthetic, and another, the anthropologist, considers physical trait and language and primitive custom to find in the emotional agreement in ceremony and ritual a dramatic presentation. Like its other arts a nation's drama is a develop- ment and is incepted, as they are, by civic and national ceremony. It is only the shortlived that 15 16 THE CHINESE DRAMA is born completely functioning. And the tenacious Chinese drama can have had neither a definitely marked inception nor a conclusion for the early scribe to have noted, even in a country of remark- able literary antiquity and the habit of notation. From the cult of the dead Chinese drama has been developed by assimilation, by the patronage of succeeding emperours, and the corresponding conversion of the Chinese people. Historians say that music existed in China in B. C. 5400. Of China's second dynasty and its "Golden Age" B. C. 2205-1766, we read that re- ligious worship was accompanied by music and dances which represented the occupations of the people — plowing and harvesting, war and peace; and that these dances illustrated the sensations of working, joy, fatigue, and content. The Chou Ritual classic written several cen- turies before the time of Confucius states that six ceremonial dances were in vogue at that early period: "In the first, wands with whole feathers were waved — in the worship of the spirits of agriculture; in the second wands with divided feathers were used — in the ancestral temples; in the third feather caps were worn on the head, and the upper garments were adorned with kingfisher feathers— in blessing the four quarters of the realm; in the fourth yak-tails were used — in ceremonial for the promotion of harmony; in the SCENE TAKEN FROM AN EVENT IN THE SUNG DYNASTY (960-1277). THE HEROINE, A FAMOUS GENERAL OF THAT TIME, HAS DISARMED HER ANTAGONIST ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE DRAMA 17 fifth shields were manipulated — to celebrate mili- tary merit; in the sixth the bare hands were waved — in homage to the stars and constellations. But the ceremonial dances chiefly in vogue were to celebrate, and partly to portray, civil and military accomplishment. "Royal music was of two kinds. If civil merit was to be celebrated the posturers grasped feather wands ; if martial prow- ess, they grasped vermillion shields and jade (embossed) battle-axes. The jade signified virtue, and the shields benevolence, to inculcate clemency to those defeated." 1 Here, without question, is action to an accom- paniment of music. Speech and song were a later emanation. Gradually these dances ex- pressed more license than litany and during the Chou dynasty, B. C. 1122-255, were forbidden in association with religious worship ; they were then presented under separate ceremonials but con- tinued to give honour to the same symbols. Elab- ourate and fantastic costumery and an increased ballet were added and pantomine had become a spectacle for popular entertainment, and was pre- sented on a stage built for the purpose instead of in a temple. Other early Chinese writers mention oc< 'urrences which establish the fact of some form of drama: i W. Arthur Cornaby in "The New China Review" for March, 1919. 18 THE CHINESE DRAMA we read of an emperour who lived seventeen hun- dred years before the Christian era who was com- mended for having forbidden certain stage con- ventions; another ruler of a pre-Christian dynasty was deprived of funeral honours because he was thought to have too much enjoyed the theatre; and a third emperour was advised to exclude actors from his court. Emile Guimet 1 says that a Chinese theatre was established by an emperour about B. C. 700 and that the writers of that century applied them- selves to the development of a poetic drama. Any literature which may have existed has been de- stroyed by succeeding rulers. We find more definite drama chronicle of the eighth century. The emperour Hsuan Tsung, or Ming Huang as he is commonly called from a posthumous title, established a school in the gardens of his palace to teach young men and women the arts of dancing and music, and prob- ably chose his court entertainers from this group. Many actors of today associate themselves with this early imperial school and call themselves members of the College of the Pear Orchard. Ming Huang, who is said to have acted upon his own stage, is today's patron saint of all actors, and his statue, with incense burning before it, may be seen in Chinese greenrooms. i "Theatre Chinois" ORIGIN OP THE CHINESE DRAMA 19 Plays during this century, which is sometimes called the first period of Chinese drama, focused on extraordinary themes, and anticipated the present heroic drama. It is probable that interest in the drama did not extend further than the Imperial court until the thirteenth century. During the Yuan dynasty, founded in 1280 by the Mongol warrior Kublai Khan, drama, as it now exists in China, appears to have slipped into being as quietly as a fall of snow overnight, and, as far as most historians are concerned with the subject, is an established fact only from this time. What actually happened in the thirteenth century was that divisions of subject and character were fixed and an enduring literature produced. CHAPTER II Types of Plays VENERATION of the dead controlled China centuries before Confucius wrote "Ever think of your ancestors and cultivate virtue," and is today the active principle in the moral and mental lives of four hundred millions of Chinese. Arts are featured by this national superstition and frequently seem to have en- dured because of it; the routine of diurnal living and the festival and ceremony of birth and burial proclaim the animate influence of the departed. Someone has said that China is a country where a few hundred millions of living are terrorized by a few thousand millions of dead. In the drama ancestor worship is an emphasized and recurrent theme. Of the three types of plays that are said to in- clude all the variations of contemporary dramatic presentation the Vun Pan Shi is known as the oldest form. Patriotism and filial devotion are its subjects; and in it music and action unite to play upon the emotions of the audience. 20 FIGURES FROM A PLAY OF THE TAI-PING REBELLION (1825-1841). THE SHORTER SOLDIER IS A REBEL AND THE OTHER A GENERAL OF THE IMPERIAL ARMY TYPES OF PLAYS 21 The Jin Pan Shi presents civil and military conditions. The difference between the Vun Pan Shi and the Jin Pan Shi is not in the libretto as one might suppose but in the manner of singing certain roles and in the tradition of the acting. A third dramatic form is the Vun Min Shi or "modern" play. Colloquial dialects are allowed in the Vun Min Shi instead of Mandarin — the dialect of Peking — which is the accepted speech of the stage as well as of the nation. Another classification > is the Cheng-pan or historical plays; the Chu-tou, civil pieces; and the Ku-wei or farces. A civil and a military play must be included on each day's program ; the latter is a popular subject that may appear in several of the six or eight plays presented during an evening. Civil and military plays are sometimes mistak- enly said to represent comedy and tragedy. Like the Hindu the Chinese stage does not distinguish carefully between the two; and when a so-called tragedy is presented it usually takes the form of melodrama with a "happy" ending. "Beauty" 2 is a rare example of a Chinese stage tragedy. "Beauty" was a faithful Chinese maiden who was lured from her home by wandering marauders; and the story of her patriotism and tragic death i W. Stanton. 2 Translated by the Reverend J. Macgowan. 22 THE CHINESE DRAMA is a popular one in Chinese theatres. But the Chinese are instinctively a humourous people — even the lines of their architecture turn up like a smiling mouth — and as entertainment they prefer to laugh than to cry. Men and women who have conducted them- selves heroically while alive and who in a Eu- ropean country might be known as saints or martyrs are deities in China and may appear as characters in the civil plays which are written around domestic incident, and in the military plays of historical and legendary fact. Military plays are concerned with historical episode and heroic or filial acts. Civil plays, fre- quently of a farcical nature, deal with the en- tanglements of every day life. As they may be read in classical collections Chinese plays — like Chinese poetry — are straight- forward in any seeming unmoral tenets they may hold. And, before accepting the statement that the Chinese stage is immoral, the foreigner should recall that plays exist as they are to be read, as they appear in acting editions, and also as they may be interpreted and developed by the actor who is sometimes allowed great license in "gag- ging". In most reputable theatres plays teach the wisdom of morality; and indeed the denoue- ment of a comedy is usually the triumph of virtue over the machinations of some evil influence. TYPES OP PLAYS 23 The Chinese penal code states the aim of dramatic performances to be to offer either real or imagined pictures of just and honourable men, chaste women, and obedient children who will encourage the spectator in the practice of virtue. The writer of an indecent play is supposed — even after death — to be persecuted by evil spirits as long as his play appears upon any stage. China has no stage censor. Anyone may set up a theatre, elabourate his artistic principles or develop his business theories without fear of the hectoring thumb; and, except for the rule which was enforced during the imperialistic government forbidding the impersonation of a reigning em- perour, any spectacle and any type of character may be presented. Plots are usually simple and well sustained but subjects are numerous and of wide range. While the most enduring plays feature the history of the country, others, no less frequently seen, include such subjects as filial and parental piety; the ex- altation of learning ; native vices and peculiarities of official corruption; vices common to mankind; legal anomalies; and the absurdities of religious practices. The depravity of the priesthood and the corruption of official China have been two controlling elements that are lashed by the dram- atist, and as theatre subjects never fail to find appreciative audiences. The five blessings for 24 THE CHINESE DRAMA which the Chinese pray, and which are also libret- to subjects, are sons, riches, long life, recovery from sickness, and office. It is noticable that these are all material blessings . . . even the wish for sons springs from the desire to provide for old age, and as a means to placate the gods after the death of parents. Other favours that the Chinese ask of their gods are that crops shall be well protected and harvests rich, and that men and beasts shall be immune from cholera. To obtain these gifts the people offer the pageants and fes- tivals which have become so popular a form of dramatic presentation in the open fields of the countryside in the spring and autumn. Such spectacles may be financed by the rich man of the village or by a community. If rains are heavy, prayer and sacrifice are com- monly offered to the god of rain that he will close the gates of Heaven in order that the rice will not rot from too profuse a supply of moisture ; and to the god of the harvest thanks are returned, in drama festival, for bountiful crops. Puppet shows are a form of amusement com- mon to many nations and to which certain writers attribute the beginning of the Chinese drama. In some sections of the country a dramatic perform- ance invariably opens with marionettes. Punch and Judy are more frequently seen in the East THE GOD OF AGRICULTURE TYPES OF PLAYS 25 than in the West and are probably a product of the Chinese imagination. Confucian themes include the popular cult for learning and filial devotion. Buddhism is the source of most of the buffonery and farce; in the theatre it not only defies but debases; it makes hideous the actual and enhances the chimerical, and suggests comic relief from religious hysteria. Not all Chinamen believe in the divinity of Bud- dha — or Fu as he is sometimes called — but all men who go to the Chinese theatre know his stage omnipotence. Satire is always a development of an old civili- zation and in that ageless country of stability and decay is a style which is profoundly and profusely worked upon. The Chinaman understands and responds to satirical comedy. He is directed on the honourable path by its smile and intrigued by its humour. Even when the Chinese dramatist writes about love he handles it with humour — with irony. To the Oriental a love that torments and tyrannizes is an absurd and stupid exaggera- tion, and the drama that depicts it has small chance of success. Plays are divided into acts and scenes. Change of scene is indicated by pantomine, or by a rapid walk about the stage of all the characters in the piece. Acts usually number four and the first may be preceded by a prologue which is spoken 26 THE CHINESE DRAMA by one of the principal characters. The denoue- ment occurs in the final act. Dualism of con- trasted scene with scene achieves the dramatic effect as in Western theatres. CHAPTER III The Plays as Literature ALTHOUGH nearly all Chinese plays in contemporary use date from one of the three prolific literary periods of the country it is agreed they lack the literary value of the poetry and the novels written during the same epochs. The Tang dynasty, A. D. 720-905; the Sung dynasty, A. D. 969-1277; and the Yuan dynasty established in 1277 and defeated by the native Chinese in 1368 — of which the third is the most important — are the significant periods both of general literature and of the drama, and pro- vide the theatre of today with the great bulk of its plays. Contemporary drama writing usually follows the Mongol (Yuan) construction. Five hundred plays of known authorship are ascribed to the Yuan dynasty. Among the eighty-five names of playwrights Bazin mentions four women, Tchao-Ming-king, Tchang-koue-pin, Hong-tseu-li-eul, and Hoa-li-lang, each of whom wrote several plays. On the list of men who were dramatists of this same period are Kouan-han- 27 28 THE CHINESE DRAMA king, the author of sixty dramas; Kao-wen-sieou with thirty to perpetuate his name; Tching-te- hoeii, who wrote eighteen plays; and Pe-jin-fou, fifteen. 1 "The Romance of the Western Pavilion" is said to be the first play to have been translated into a European language. And as Chinese literature it ranks as one of the best examples; this play was written in the late thirteenth or early four- teenth century, and as "Hsi-siang-chi" is well known to this generation of theatregoers. It is the story of a scholar named Chang who makes love to his hostess' daughter Ying-ling and leaves her in order to compete in the government exam- inations. This separation by examinations is a frequent theme that is inherited from Confucian precept. In 1755 a Jesuit priest named Premare trans- lated into French "Tchao-chi-Kou-eul" or "L'Orphelin de la Chine." In it cruelty and craft are conquered by self-sacrifice, and the play is probably the nearest approach to tragic exposition that any Chinese dramatist has accomplished. When Voltaire adapted this play to the French stage he wrote of it, "Malgre l'incroyable, il y regne de l'interet et malgre la foule des evene- i These titles are in French. In English spelling tch is often written as ch; eu is shortened to u; urh becomes erh, et cetera, and accents, except the circumflex, are omitted. THE PLAYS AS LITERATURE 29 ments tout est de la clarte la plus lumineuse." He added that in spite of the fact that it lacked eloquence, reason, and passion it was a more brilliant play than any that French dramatists had produced during the same period — the fourteenth century. If Voltaire could have read a later trans- lation, made in 1834 by Stanislas Strange, in which the songs are included (a poignant part of any Chinese drama that is too often supposed un- important because sung) he would have recog- nized the passion and reason and eloquence that are in the original play. "Tchao-Mei-Hiang" or "Les Intrigues d'une Soubrette" is a comedy in prose and verse that is translated into French, and offers an opportun- ity to contrast four styles of writing which follow one another almost on succeeding pages. In scene four of the first act Siao-man speaks in the classic style when she tells her maid, Fan-sou, of Chinese tradition and her own passion for the intellectual life; the speech commences "Du fleuve Ho est sortie la table." The dialogue which fol- lows between Siao-man and Fan-sou is in semi- literary, semi-popular style known in Chinese as pan-wen-pan-sou. In the same scene the verses sung by Fan-sou, who is the principal character and to whom therefore the singing part is given, and which commence "Entendez vous les modula- tions pures et harmonieuses", are subject to both 30 THE CHINESE DRAMA rhyme and rhythm in the original and are rhythmic in the translation. In the answer that Siao-man makes to Fan-sou: "Fan-sou, si je consens a aller me promener avec toi, et que Madame Han vienne a le savoir, que deviendrai-je ? " the familiar style is used. Modes of speech usually correspond to types of character and therefore vary throughout any play. Mandarin is the dialect of most theatres. Local dialects are sometimes heard in village playhouses and in certain popular farces. Although the Peking dialect is the official one a dozen others are heard in various parts of the country, and they differ as a romance language differs from an Anglo-Saxon. If the stage speech of the actor from Peking is not understood by the Chinaman from the South stage action and characters are so prescribed by tradition and familiar from fre- quent repetition that plays even in an unfamiliar dialect are intelligible to almost any audience. The adherence in China's theatre curriculum to the traditions of religious and philosophic teaching and the playwright's reiteration of his- torical event and personage as dramatic material operate conjointly as an educational medium in every part of the country to which the drama penetrates. And this semi-standardization — semi because there is always the possible element of the distorting actor or the too imaginative drama- MEI LAN-FANG IN THE COSTUME FOR A PLAY WHICH STAGES ONE SCENE IN THE MOON THE PLAYS AS LITERATURE 31 tist — has linked dynasties in a more or less fac- titious pictorial history. Thus, operating upon one another like a boom- erang, the audience is placidly quiescent when confronted with the monotony of tradition and the playwright is content to rearrange the same stories that were the dramatic inheritance of his predecessors, and each has but little interest in the drama as a form of literature. It is true that, like the poet and the novelist, the playwright is concerned with sentiment and ideals and that he handles them with a suppleness that is elo- quent; but the beauty which derives from fine cohesion of thought and harmony of words has been, in his estimation, as it has been in that of the people, outside the province of the theatre. The actor is so despised in China that he has not had the association of scholars, and the play- wright has suffered for the actor's stigma. He is not classed among the "literati", and if occasion- ally a literary man is sufficiently intrigued by the drama form of literature to write a play he pub- lishes it under a nom de guerre. The fact that it has been the custom to hire a playwright by the season to travel with a troupe of actors to write librettos from popular novels or retell an historic episode, gives an idea of what his status has been, and of the difficulty to be 32 THE CHINESE DRAMA overcome before playwriting in China is con- sidered to be a literary profession. A collected but incomplete dramatic library exists in fifteen volumes under the title "Shi K'au". Another, of Mongol plays, the "Yuan Ch'u shuan tsa chi", is in eight volumes. A Chinese edition of the latter was published in 1615 that includes one hundred dramas and an illustration for each play. Plays to be read are shorter than the acting version. Acting editions may be bought in China three for a penny. They are thin paper covered volumes in uniform size and varying colours, and resemble the "Farmer's Al- manac" of New England book tradition. These editions carry a few stage directions; "entrance" and "exit" are written as "ascend" and "descend", and "turn the back and say" replaces the "aside" of the Western theatre. There are many Chinese plays that are avail- able for reading in English, French, and German translations. "Tchao-Mei-Hiang" or "Les In- trigues d'une Soubrette" a is one of the rare Chi- nese love dramas and is often played. It was written during the Yuan dynasty. "Hoei-Lan-Ki" or "The Circle of Chalk" 2 is a drama of high adventure and the vindication of personal inno- cence. "Pi-Pa-Ki" or "L'Histoire du Luth" written i Translated by M. Bazin ainS. 2 Translated by Stanislas Julien. THE PLAYS AS LITERATURE 33 by Kao-tong-kia of the Yuan dynasty is a popular example of the recurrent theme of filial piety. Filial and family devotion are the love inhibitions of the Chinese mind. A father rules over his son as long as the former lives, and retains a certain dominion after death, and a son's acceptance of this traditional subjection is uncomplaining and complying; he waits for his turn to be the head of the family when he shall have the much desired sons of his own. Such filial relations of respect and self-sacrifice are more important to the Chi- nese than sex love and marriage, and are the dramatist's most passional material. "Sanh Yoer Gi Ts" or "Leaving a Son in a Mulberry Orchard" is the story of a father's sac- rifice. The play dates from the Tsur dynasty and is an example of family pride and integrity. "Ho Din Mung" is another popular play. Its story is from the Chow dynasty, B. C. 1122-255. In it the wife of Tsang Ts dies, and the action centers upon a dream in which Tsang Ts sees his wife's coffin split in pieces by an axe. The Chinese understand the significance of dreams in relation to repressed desire and many of their plays were concerned with this theme a long time before dream purport was written about and treated as a new subject in Europe. "K'ung Dsun Ci" or "Empty City Trap" is an example of the Jin Pan Shi, or military play, and 34 THE CHINESE DRAMA is the story of an episode of the Hur dynasty. An important city of China — so the story goes — was about to be attacked while its soldiery was absent. The Military Advisor opened the city gates, sta- tioned at the entrances what few soldiers he could command, armed them with brooms and uni- formed them as street sweepers. When the enemy approached it heard these "sweepers" singing of the strength of the city, of its great army, and of plans to torture the captured enemy after battle. The enemy was frightened and ran away. The important city in China was saved. As a drama this bit of history is rich in humour and provides a constant entertainment to the Chinese who, as a race, have a keen sense of the ludicrous. Other plays in French are "Ho Han-Chan" or "La Tunique Confrontee" a drama in four acts written by a woman, Tchang-Koue-Pin ; "Ho- Lang-Tan" or "La Chanteuse", author unknown; "Teou Ngo-Youen" or "Le Ressentiment de Teou Ngo", by Kouan-Han-King. 1 English translations include "Han-Koong-Tsen" or "The Sorrows of Han", an historical play of conditions existing about the beginning of the Christian era; its moral teaches the evil con- sequence of luxury and supineness in the reign- i These three plays were written during the Yuan dy- nasty and have been translated by M. Bazin aine. CHINESE ACTORS; LEFT TO RIGHT— CHIANG MIAO-PING, ME1 LAN-FANG, AND YAO YU-YING THE PLAYS AS LITERATURE 35 ing emperour; "Ho Man San-Peng Tsu Muk Lan's Parting"; "The Golden Leafed Chrysan- themum"; "The Sacrifice of the Soul of Ho Man Sau"; and "Lao-seng-erh" or "An Heir in His Old Age". The last play is a story of domestic life in which an old man is so desirous of a son to perform the obsequies at his tomb that he takes a young wife into his family. Two plays already mentioned under the French translated titles appear in English as "The Orphan of the Chou Family" and "The Intrigues of a Maid". If, as we are told, they lack any particular literary merit, they are remarkable documents of the inconceivable magnificence of Imperial China and the faithful and fantastic and isolated mind of the Chinese people. CHAPTER IV Religious Influence upon the Drama IT is not possible to understand the Chinese drama without some knowledge of the re- ligious doctrines and the demonolatry of the Chinese people. Not only was the stage incepted by religious rite but it has remained dependent upon Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism for theme and character and symbol. Supersitions inherited from Buddhistic princi- ples frequently denude the stage of mortality and are the playwright's inspiration for extravaganza; he may create a mise en scene in terrestial im- mortality and people it with nostalgic gods and provoking genii and find it more absorbing to an audience than the type of play that transpires on an earthly plane and presents the principles of morality that Confucius meditated upon. The playwright may even unite the two — and add a theme from Taoism — in his high romance. But when fact and fancy meet and have been mingled in such heterogeneous drama as this even a Chinaman is sometimes unable to decide whether 36 RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 37 a play that turns on the achievements of a general and attendant genii, or of an emperour and cer- tain immortals, is, except for the genii and the im- mortals, all reality, or except for the general and the emperour, all supposition. Upon such mis- leading and rare occasion the general may be as foreign to the battle lists as the genii are to the birth registry, for when a Chinese dramatist most clearly limns the unlikely he may the most ar- dently surround it with every ramification of the actual. Confucianism is based upon ancestor worship and teaches that the source of morality is in filial piety. Confucianism is so definite a theory of conduct that it cannot be expressed in many sym- bolic forms such as Buddhism furnishes, but it provides themes for numberless librettos. Bud- dhism teaches that release from one's present existence is the greatest happiness. Its four "truths" are that life is sorrow; that the chain of reincarnation results from desire ; that the only escape is through annihilation of desire; and that the way of escape is through the "eightfold path" of right belief, right resolve, right words, right acts, right life, right effort, right thinking, right meditation. Buddha denied the virtue of caste, ritual, and asceticism as taught by the Hindu sage Guatama, and insisted upon the necessity of pity, kindness, and patience to receive salvation. 38 THE CHINESE DRAMA The most common form of Buddhist drama is the fantasia or the buffoonery of deity and demon symbols through which Buddha is frequently worshipped. Taoism teaches that contemplation and reason, avoidance of force, and disregard of mere cere- mony, are the means of regeneration. It may be > ( said that Confucianism is based upon morality, \ Buddhism upon idolatry, and Taoism on super- stition; that the one is man-worship, the second image-worship, and the third spirit- worship. Or, in another form, Confucianism deals with the dead past, Buddhism with the changing future, and Taoism with the evils of the present. However we classify we shall inevitably mix them and be justified by the fact that a Chinaman sometimes confuses, and often has some belief in, all three. A Confucian may worship in a Buddhist temple and follow a Taoist ritual. Two thousand years of peaceful existence in one country of a trilogy of doctrines, and the com- mon meeting ground of the theatre of gods and demons and genii, of teaching and tenet that rep- resent all three, indicate a certain degree of national religious indifference. To add to the long list of mythological beings derived from doctrinal sources are the idols of historic association which have been deified for battle valour or for civil accomplishment. During MEDITATION A Buddhist Exercise RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 39 the twelfth century Kaing T'ai Kung deified many soldiers, and in the fourteenth century the first emperour of the Ming dynasty appointed a great number of city gods. It was then only a short step from a "Great man to a little idol" and ulti- mately to become both a household and a stage deity. There seems a god for every occasion and a dozen needs for his favour every day. In the Imperial Theatre in Pekin there are three stages, one above the other: the highest is for gods, the middle space is for mortals, and the lowest plane receives the slain villian. Heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth, with all that these planes may be sup- posed to control, appear to figure in dramatic per- formances, and may even be shown during a single play. Such fantastic, and so traditioned an imagina- tion, and such uncircumscribed deification baffle the "barbarian" and disqualify him to accept a stage performance with a tenth part of the intelli- gence and, in the beginning, almost none of the pleasure he will remark in every Chinaman in the audience. But as he continues to study the Chi- nese drama he will not fail to perceive the virtue — and the attendant weaknesses — of ancestor wor- ship, of the belief in recurrent life, and the earned privileges of another existence, which govern and satisfy the great majority of the Chinese people. 40 THE CHINESE DRAMA If it seems strange to find dogma in the theatre, the fear of evil demons and the respect for, and placation of, symbols, we have only to recall that doctrines and drama have developed concurrently. Any attempt to separate them might destroy the potency of both; and would certainly rob the Chinese theatre of many of its most popular characters While an occasional "modern" Chinaman may believe himself indifferent to religion, or may call himself a Christian and forsake his native gods as religious deities, most men instinctively believe in the protective power of inherited idols and retain the habit to enjoy them at the theatre, where, received only as entertainment, there may be a subconscious sense of placating the family deities in the playhouse for neglect of them in the temple and the home. * rf . ! lfl{ i r - • - - Ml THIS TRIO OF ACTORS REPRESENTS AN HISTORICAL EVENT OF THE WEI DYNASTY (A.D. 220-264). THE LEFT AND RIGHT HAND FIGURES ARE AN OPPOSING STRATEGIST AND GENERAL WHO WERE RECONCILED BY A NEUTRAL AND DISTINGUISHED KING— THE CENTER FIGURE CHAPTER V Types and Characters ALTHOUGH deity and demon are lavishly presented in the Chinese theatre they do not overbalance the mortal stage types of heroine, ingenue, villian, et cetera, who people the stage of every country. The ubiquitous human being who conserves his own blood and spills that of his enemy, who weds and repents to solace himself as best he may, who clings to life and dies with valour, is the villian and the hero of Eastern drama as he is the villian and the hero in a western playhouse. Tradition of doctrine and philosophy and the cir- cumstance of government decorate this universal figure with the trappings of nationality and cause his digression from the general dramatic path to fulfil an occidental or an oriental destiny. Stage characters in China represent every class of society and are a long list of emperours, generals, scholars, heads of families and sons, and, among women, empresses, court attendants, courtesans, serving women and soldiers, the 41 42 THE CHINESE DRAMA mother, the wife, the concubine. In associated action, these terrestial personages appear with gods and not infrequently assume immortal priv- ilege as well as present earthly foible. Stage characters are classified according to type; and are interesting to an audience as types quite as much as the individuals of the immedi- ate drama in which they may be playing. Each has a traditional makeup that is well known to theatre habitues. Hsiao Sheng represents young civilians; there are several in each company and they alternate to impersonate hero roles. Cheng Sheng appears as an emperour or dis- tinguished person and wears the traditional long and flowing beard. Wu Sheng impersonates elderly military com- manders, and wears a beard. Tsung Sheng may be a minister of state and must wear a beard. Wai or Ta Hua Mein has a dark painted face and a villian's role ; Lui Fen also signifies a villian. Pu Tieh Shik is of martial character and per- forms feats of strength. Kung Chiao plays a father or corresponding elderly role. Nan Cho or Pien Eho may be either a clown or deformed person, and has a much painted face. TWO MALE ACTORS. ON THE LEFT, CHIU CHEN FENG AS A WOMAN; ON THE RIGHT, CHENG CHIEN-CHIU IN MASCULINE DRESS TYPES AND CHARACTERS 43 Wu Chun Hu is a painted-face warrior adept with sword and spear and at tumbling. Chun Shou Hsia means a soldier's makeup. Sheng signifies male character and Tan a woman's role. The infrequent appearance of women upon the Chinese stage during the last few centuries has not noticeably affected dramatic presentation ex- cept in the amourous parts which, even to an accustomed eye and ear, are sometimes grotesque when mimed by a man. But the youths of eight- een or twenty who are usually seen in feminine roles are surprisingly natural. They trip about with toes thrust into tiny slippers, to produce the effect of bound feet; their voices are trained to high tones, and their faces are painted in delicate or exaggerated imitation of the infrequent sex. These actors, who impersonate women, receive the highest salaries. As in the early Greek and Roman dramas women's roles are sometimes played by eunuchs. The following list includes the important fem- inine roles. Cheng Tan, an empress or principal wife. Hua Tan, who takes youthful roles and may be the heroine. Hsiao Tan, the house servant type who may be an intermediary in social intrigue. 44 THE CHINESE DRAMA Wu Tan, who impersonates a woman soldier, and of whom there may be four in a company. Wen Wu Tan assumes either military or civil character and may be the heroine. Chan Tan is a young married woman. "He" usually has considerable ability as a singer. Fu or Lao Tan represent elderly women. Nu Chou signifies a wicked and disagreeable person. Tang Tan represents several minor characters. Ma Tan is a serving woman or soldier. 1 The majority of these roles require a painted face; and colours symbolize types. A sly but dignified person paints with white; a sacred person, either a deity or an emperour, uses red colouring; black belongs to the honest workman; green sometimes means a demon; and gold is the property of the gods. Variations on these definite types may be suggested by mixed colours. On the program the characters are announced as well as the names of the actors. The entrance of an important player is immediately followed by a self introduction in which he talks of the person he is to present ; sometimes he will recount in detail his family history, why he appears, where he is from, and what he desires to accomplish i Characters quoted from W. Stanton's book, "The Chinese Drama"; with one or two added from information received from Mr. Shen Hung, a Chinese actor. % IS tf^XJM Iff if & ffi &l*>4k£g> ^ *i «miM ft **> M m %&m ft f PROGRAM OF A THEATRE IN PEKING, 1920. ON WHICH EIGHT PLATS ARE ANNOUNCED TYPES AND CHARACTERS 45 during the entire period of the play; he may even repeat certain of these speeches upon a second and a third entrance — these repetitions of char- acter exposition are often erroneously omitted in translated plays. Throughout a performance an intimate relation is maintained between the characters and the audience. CHAPTER VI The Actors "The art of the actor cuts the sinews of all earnest government." THE Chinese actor seldom experiences in private life any of the respect that his roles obtain within the theatre. An occasional remarkably gifted player attached to a permanent theatre in Peking or Canton — and who makes a good deal of money — may end by receiving a degree of deference but he is the rara avis of his profession. Usually deriving from low birth, and inheriting the position of a social outcast which developed for actors during the Mongol dynasty, he is cut off from other society than that of theatre people. Until recently the descendants of an actor, to the third generation, were forbidden to compete in the public examinations which offer to the poor man in China the unique opportunity to acquire wealth and influence. The manager of a traveling troupe of players not infrequently buys very young boys and trains 46 THE ACTORS 47 them to become members of his company. Dur- ing six years each is forced to learn innumerable plays and their accompaning songs; to become enough of an athlete to perform the acrobatic tricks which are so popular a part of military plays ; to walk with bound feet in case he develops an ability to take women's roles; and to ex- ercise an hour a day with head thrown back and mouth stretched wide to strengthen his voice. All of this time he is under the implacable rule of a master, and his diet is fixed and frugal. To better this condition to any extent in later years an actor must display a marked talent or meet and please an influential patron of the stage who will purchase his independence. Sons of actors have few opportunities to enter any other profession than that of the theatre. There is no prompter, and every player must memorize from one to two hundred roles. He must also cultivate the quality of suggestion for, by the inflection of his voice, by action and gesture, it devolves upon him to suggest absent properties and scenery. Actors are often hired by wealthy men to pro- vide an evening's entertainment in a private house. When the guests sit down to dinner five players in rich costume enter and bow profoundly. One of them presents a book in which the titles of several scores of plays are written. The list is 48 THE CHINESE DRAMA examined by the principal guests and if the name of anyone of them is found among the names of the characters in a play the piece containing it is immediately discarded from the possible ones chosen for presentation. Etiquette is so crystal- ized and carefully maintained in China that even such slight association with an actor is against social tradition. Occasionally a youth belonging to the troupe may go about among the guests and be talked to if a capricious host invites, but apart from his role as entertainer, he associates only with his own class. As one believes, or not, in the proverb that the exception proves the rule he is glad to learn that there is a notable exception to this prevailing prejudice in the person of Mei Lan-fang, a young actor who is finding favour with a group of liter- ary men and a discerning theatre public in Peking. Although his celebrity has developed since the fall of the empire nine years ago, the plays in which he appears and the manner of his acting belong to the Imperial Stage tradition. Mei Lan- fang limits himself to about twenty plays and presents each role with remarkable intelligence and sympathy; his songs have been rewritten for him by celebrated poets in order that they shall be of literary merit. The Chinese say of Mei Lan-fang that not only is he unusually gifted, but that he is a student, MEI LAN-FANG, THE MOST CELEBRATED ACTOR IN CHINA AT THE PRESENT TIME. HE IMPERSONATES ONLY FEMININE CHARACTERS THE ACTORS 49 pleasing of voice and face, careful of his civilian position, and unwilling to play an immoral role, and that by the force of these qualities he is influencing the general public to regard the actor with less disfavour. Mei plays only women's roles and, in stage makeup, is as feminine in appear- ance as his voice is in sound. It is frequently said that there have been no actresses in China, but during the Mongol and the beginning of the Ming dynasty women took all feminine roles. The Ming emperour Ch'ien Lung forbade their appearance upon the stage for the reason that his mother had been an actress — it was during the thirteenth century that a law was passed ranking actresses and courtesans in the same official group. From that time until towards the finish of the Manchu power in 1911 actresses were seldom seen. The profession was considered to offer individual privilege and a free- dom from moral restraint that has periodically been frowned upon by a nation in which the majority of women are still at the disposal of fathers and husbands. It is the "courtesanes savantes" who, in some measure, have continued the feminine element in the theatre during the prohibitive years. They have been playwrights, and are often portrayed as stage characters — they should not be confounded with the "women who smile in public" who are 50 THE CHINESE DRAMA seldom presented upon the stage. These "courte- sanes savantes" attend and understand the theatre and may become actresses; they belong to an established order of educated women and must qualify in many studies before they are "diplomee". Each possesses what seems to be all the charms of spirit as well as of person . . . "In order that a young girl be admitted into the society of courtesans ... it is necessary that she is distinguished by beauty, by the delicate percep- tions of her spirit, and a careful education; she must understand vocal music, the flute, the guitar, the dance, history and philosophy; she must also be able to write all the characters of 'Tao-te king' — a book which contains the doctrines of the philosopher Lao-tsu and is one of the most obscure volumes in the Chinese language. When she has spent several months in the Pavilion of One Hundred Flowers; when she knows how to dance and sing and play a castanette accompani- ment she becomes a 'free' woman; she then feels above the young girl who is dependent upon her father or the legal concubine who is under the protection of her husband, and above the widow who is dependent upon her son" ; 1 but while her "freedom" excuses her from duties peculiar to her sex it debars her from civil and religious ceremonies. i M. Bazin in "Theatre Chinois". STROLLING MUSICIANS. PAINTED BY KU CHIEN LUNG, MING DYNASTY. ORIGINAL PAINTING IN THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS THE ACTORS 51 Today the actress is again commonly seen in China and is usually histrionically gifted. In Peking women sometimes maintain their own theatres and appear with men or form separate companies of their own sex and play men's roles. There are many classes of male actors : the first in importance is the permanent theatre group who appear only in a few large cities; temporary players perform in temples in cities and villages; the Ts'au Dan Shi or Grass Stage Players also perform in villages but build a stage upon the grass; the Kang Woo Pei or River and Canal actors who live upon boats, use this floating domicile as a stage and are content with an audience that gathers upon the river bank. There is a great army of solitary players — the Speaking Books — these men appear in tea houses and res- taurants; their accomplishments are singing and story telling. The itinerant actor group includes the fre- quently met master of a trick monkey; the stroll- ing musicians with a drum and gong to sound and a few stories to relate; and the men who are heard upon bridges and street corners chanting historical fact and adventure. These solitudin- arians, who are particularly ill paid, ill treated beyond their fellows, and as despised as human beings may be, have not even the companionship of their own kind to mitigate their sad existence; 52 THE CHINESE DRAMA they earn only a sufficient number of cash 1 each day to buy the two bowls of rice which maintains their strength to wander. In Peking there are many permanent theatres and a pronounced interest in the drama, and actors like to consider themselves native of this city no matter how far outside its gates they may be forced to travel. There, where the most tal- ented may live the year round in quarters in the theatre district, maturity occasionally brings one of them the lenitive of success — as in the case of Mei Lan-fang — but to the majority, either per- manently placed or among the ambulant enter- tainers of the nation, whatever comedy and con- tent the actor may experience is within the illusory existance of the playhouse itself. i A cash is considerably less than an American penny. STROLLING MOUNTEBANK WITH MONKEY, BY KU CHIEN LUNG, MING DYNASTY. ORIGINAL PAINTING IN THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS CHAPTER VII The Music "The former kings ordained music to inspire reverence for virtue." TO unaccustomed ears the music in Chi- nese theatres — usually played fortissimo and with much brass — is as formless and lacking in melody as sound may be. It is an art developed for Chinese people and is based upon a different scale from the one the Western auricular sense has been trained to register with pleasure. Before we consider the importance of music in the theatre it is well to understand some- thing of the principles which govern Chinese mu- sical sound. Music is a measurable art, and it is therefore possible to understand why the Occidental does not often respond to Chinese music by a realiza- tion that tone measurement varies in different parts of the world. The Western scale is tempered and because we are trained to the almost imper- ceptible deviation from the absolute purity of its intervals the nerves of the ear cannot endure, 53 54 THE CHINESE DRAMA without offense, the excess or deficency in an interval of the Chinese untempered scale. And while the Chinese have what corresponds to our chromatic scale, tone measurement is again not the same. In China a scale of only five tones was in gen- eral use until B. C. 1100, when two more were added by the system of measuring sound with liis-bamboo reeds and the scale became like the Western diatonic and was composed of five full tone and two half tones, but one of the latter occurred between the fourth and fifth degrees instead of in its Western place between the third and fourth degrees. When the Mongol warrior Kublai Khan became emperour he introduced a new scale of ten notes ; during the Ming dynasty this was rearranged: all notes producing half tones were excluded and the scale became pentonic again; but while it con- tained only seven notes it measured more than an octave. Such experiment and change unite to increase the difficulties of Chinese music in its own country as well as in the West and add to Occidental prejudice. "According to Chinese ideas music rests upon two fundamental principles — the shen-li or spirit- ual, immaterial principle, and the ch'i-shu or sub- stantial form. All natural productions are rep- KOUAN (Bamboo) THE MUSIC 55 resented by unity; all that requires perfecting at the hands of man is called under the generic term (wan), plurality. Unity is above, it is heaven; plurality is below, it is earth. The immaterial principle is above, that is, it is inherent in material bodies, and is considered their (pen) basic origin. The material principle is below; it is the (shing) form or figure of the shen-li. The form is limited to its proper shape by (shu) number, and it is subjected to the rule of the shen-li. Therefore when the material principle of music (that is, the instruments) is clearly and rightly illustrated, the corresponding spiritual principle (that is, the essence, the sounds of music) become perfectly manifest." * The Chinese have always liked to find a simili- tude of contrast existing between everything in creation. Between heaven and earth, they say, there is perfect harmony. Three is the emblem of heaven and two the symbol of earth. If two sounds are in the proportion of three to two they will harmonize as perfectly as heaven and earth. "On this principle the Chinese evolved musical sound through a series of bamboo tubes differing in length ; the first tube was cut nine inches long, and the second exactly two thirds this length, which rendered a perfect fifth — in European music also expressed by a ratio of three to two. i J. A. Van aalst. 56 THE CHINESE DRAMA The second bamboo, being treated on the same principle, produced a third tube measuring exactly two thirds of the length, and giving a note a per- fect fifth higher than that of the second tube. This new sound seeming too far distant from the first or fundamental note, the length of the pro- ducing tube was doubled and the note became an octave lower." 1 The tubes engendered one an- other and always measured two-thirds or four- thirds of their generator. These bamboo tubes are known as liis. This short technical account will serve to show that Chinese music is not merely the "delirious noise" the Westerner is apt to style it and then dismiss from his mind as something without prin- ciple or value. And when we realize that the eight men (Pang-Mein) who form the orchestra must serve a long apprentice to learn the tech- nique of moon-guitars, flute, two-string fiddle, cymbals, drums, and gongs which make up the theatre orchestra, we are further convinced that there are directions and difficulties for the Orien- tal musician which are quite as exacting as those for the European. In theatres the orchestra is seated on the floor at the back of the stage. The man who plays the side drum is the conductor — when such a person is needed, — he is known as the Ku Shou. i J. A. Van aalst. VIE KIN GUITAR WITH FOUR CORDS JN SILK OR METAL, PLATED WITH FINGER NAIL OR SMALL PICK THE MUSIC 57 The Shang Shou plays the moon-guitar, flute, and reeds ; San Shou plays cymbals and the two string violin which is so popular an instrument among celestial music lovers; it varies in form but never has more than two strings which are tuned to a distance of a fifth from each other. The Erh Shou plays the three string violin, reeds and flute. Other men play upon large and small metal or stone gongs and various drums; and there is a player to relieve with the brasses. Each style of music is named. To illustrate: Erh- Wang is played during solemn, and Pang tsu during martial, action. Every musical theme has its particular emotional appeal and its significance is understood by the audience. A few characters in a play may have an associated melody as in Occidental musico-dramatic performance. A change in the music is indicative of a change in the action, and announces an attendant event — a battle, a marriage, a burial. Stringed instru- ments usually accompany singing; but drums, cymbals, gongs, and castanets may sound in the finale. In listening to Chinese music the strike of a wooden stick upon a block, by which the conductor marks time, is agreeably evident. During military plays, strings, in conjunction with the drums and cymbals of Western martial association, replace the wind instruments. After a quotation or a command spoken by an actor 58 THE CHINESE DRAMA cymbals sound ten or fifteen notes in rapid suc- cession, and often drown his voice — but as the audience has usually seen the play, or another almost identical, so many times that it knows what he is saying, this conflict of sound is not considered to matter. Cymbals also provide the only evident separation between the several dramas on each day's program, which, with only such musical warning, follow in quick sequence. Chinese musical instruments have been made from stone, earth, metal, bamboo, wood, silk, skin, and gourds, and each material has its traditional association with nature. History guarantees the existence of music in China as far back as the forty-fifth century before Christ when it attributes the seven-string lute to Fou-hi. And the ardent editor Confucius wrote of music that was played in B. C. 2200; and mentioned that it was passing through a decadent period during his own lifetime. About the tenth century A. D., during the second era of drama significance, a singing role which has continued to the present time, was introduced into plays to accompany and elabourate the speaking part. In the earliest translated Chinese plays the words of these songs were often omitted as they were supposed to be of slight importance; actually they are necessary for se- THE MUSIC 59 quence and emphasis, and contain much of the poetry and delicate sentiment of the play. Musical themes are traditional in the theatre and are constantly repeated to accompany new groupings of words. The songs interest an au- dience less as composition than for the manner in which they are sung. They are often long recitatives in which words are pronounced to several successive notes, and differ from the sacred music of China, which is slow and sweet, in that the songs of the theatre are sung in high and shrill head tones, or falsetto. They differ in significance from the Greek chorus, and are sung by one person who is usually the principal character, and who may be drawn from any social condition. In the "Sorrows of Han" the singer is an emperour; in the "Intrigues of a Maid" it is a young slave girl. In this use of the singing among the spoken roles a theory of dramatics offered by Lope de Vega was illustrated long before he lived. De Vega said that when a man wishes to give counsel he speaks in a differ- ent tone with a studied choice of words and an emphasis that he would not use in ordinary conversation. Musical notation in China is difficult to under- stand both because it varies in old and new music and because it is inexact. The native musicians say that to be able to decipher manuscript music 60 THE CHINESE DRAMA they must first hear it played. A sheet of music looks very much like a page of writing to the foreigner, who can read neither, as no staff is used in music; and notes, after the manner of ideographs, are printed from the top of the page down and from right to left. The tone symbols have changed with the succeeding dynasties: there are twelve in present usage. They may be written in two sizes to suggest two octaves, and dots are sometimes added to indicate held notes, two for a half and three for a whole note. The usual time is four-four, although three-four tempo is also popular. Space left between two notes may indicate a rest, but the time duration must either be learned or be decided by individual pleasure. When words are printed with music they are placed between the notes. However irregular notation may be the origin of music is authentic and ancient; and the sound of it in the theatre, either sung by young actors or played upon strings and reeds and metal, is of remarkable emotional significance and appeal. Although a dissimilar sense perception renders Chinese music unpleasant to the average West- ener, an occasional Occidental agrees with the Chinese to find it passionate, provocative, submis- sive, commanding, or sentimental, in accord with the action of the play, and of an inherent and singular beauty. HOU K'lN OR TWO-STRING VIOLIN CHAPTER VIII Decoration, Costume, and Symbolic Design DECORATION is usually considered as an external of the drama. In China, however, it has so profoundly infiltered into the dramatic spectacle through the national disposi- tion to symbolism (in all the seductive fantasie of form and colour to which the symbol lends itself) that decoration has become an essential, as well as a sentient, component of the Imperial theatre. And this occurs in a country where the stage has no scenery. Such apparent anachronism is ex- plained by Chinamen that as their theatre is not imitative, landscape, or an interiour, is created for an audience by suggestion; by emotion; and, it must be confessed of the theatre habitue of today, by drama tradition. To the Chinese, scenery is a "silly and unneces- sary bother." A court event which may have taken place centuries ago in a magnificent en- tourage will be reproduced in the playhouse with every detail of costume and mode of speech care- 61 62 THE CHINESE DRAMA fully exact but without scenery and with almost no stage furnishing. The imagination that has created in Chinese art so much chimerical humour of animal and flower and fetish can find a river where there is no water, and a mountain where none is painted. Prescribed action creates scenery! If some character must climb a mountain, pantomimic motions assume the presence of the granite hill. If a criminal is to be executed it is accomplished with a bamboo pole and traditional movements on the part of the actor. He, the criminal, wails a confession of guilt, walks to one side of the stage and stands under a bamboo pole on which a cloth is tied; he indicates strangulation by throwing back his head and looking up to heaven. If, in a stage story, a general goes upon a journey, the scene is not changed to transport one's mind to another place, instead the soldier cracks a whip, dashes across the stage to a crash of cymbals, and announces that he has arrived. To dismount from his absent steed he pirouettes upon one foot and drops his whip ; to mount he turns upon the other foot and picks up his whip. If a plot demands that a fairy enter in a chariot of clouds, a feminine figure advances bearing horizontally two flags upon which clouds and wheels are painted; she is accompanied by another actor in the ubiquitous blue cotton of the Chinese workman. ME] LAN-FANG IN THE COSTUME OF AN ANCIENT WARRIOR COSTUME AND SYMBOLIC DESIGN 63 Upon the stage a man may drink wine in which, unknown to himself, a venomous snake has been dissolved, he may suffer a frightful irritation, throw himself into a pond, wash, and find himself cured, in a propertyless pantomine that is per- fectly understood by his audience. Rivers, walls, temples, groves, thrones, couches, are represented by a bench or screen, and if the acting is good everyone is satisfied. But if scenery exists only in the imagination, costumery is splendidly authentic and is fre- quently of astonishing beauty. Chinese costume — like plumcake — from the very richness of its material, is long lived; and the clothes used in today's theatre may have been worn several cen- turies ago by mandarins and court officials, by emperours, their wives and concubines. As Chinese dress was designed for ceremonial purpose — a cloak in which to hide any condition of spiritual or physical poverty — and to present men to the world as they wished to appear, it is not difficult to realize why it is so magnificent and costly. The traditional stage dress of even a beggar is a silk coat of a gay checked design. There is a tradition too to be followed in the "barbarian's" dress, and he must wear a bit of fur about his throat no matter what the temperature. The necessity for accuracy in stage dress means that an actor's wardrobe may be so expensive that 64 THE CHINESE DRAMA he more often hires than owns it. Establishments exist to furnish stage clothes by the season to an entire company; and servants, who return every costume to its particular box after each wearing, are included in the rental price. Faces are painted with red, black, white, green, and gold, and add their colour characterization to the spectacle. The effect, even without scenery, that is obtained by groups of painted figures dressed in stiff brocade of all tints, by the glitter of immense jewels, of gold traceries and silver tissue, of tufted plumes and long pheasant feathers that wave above glistening headdresses, of glinting swords and brilliantly uniformed soldiery, is of memorable dazzle and magnificence. Pierre Loti mentions 1 the stage trappings for the actors who played in the Empress' theatre in Peking, and which he was privileged to see when he was one of the Occidental soldiery ap- pointed to guard the looted Imperial City in which the imperial ruler, Tsu-Hsi, gratified her whims and cruelties, her emotional desires and her de- mand for entertainment, during the years she lived behind the inner walls of Peking. Tsu-Hsi was deeply entertained by the theatre and wrote a few plays herself for palace presentation. Loti says "I arrive in time to see . . . the decora- tions, emblems, and accessories of the Chinese i "The Last Days of Pekin." " St Symbol for "Happiness" TWO COMMON CHINESE SYMBOLS COSTUME AND SYMBOLIC DESIGN 65 Imperial theatre. They were cumbersome, frail things, intended to serve but for a night or two, and then forgotten for an indefinite time in a room which was never opened . . . mythological representations were evidently given at this theatre, the scene taking place either in hell or with the gods in the clouds ; and such a collection as there was of monsters, chimeras, wild beasts and devils, in cardboard or paper mounted or carcasses made of bamboo or whalebone, all devised with perfect genius for the horrible, with an imagination surpassing the limits of a night- mare." It is this imagination surpassing a nightmare that shaped avatar and devil to scurry and swoop as stage character, and that wove grotesque and fantastic forms into brocaded robe for Mongol and Ming and Manchu to reappear upon the stage of today. Although fact and fancy offer rare latitude for spectacular effect they maintain this separation : gods and mortals as stage people may be creatures of imagination, or legendary por- traits — if a god has made the step from person to personification — but costumes must be either authentic or minutely copied from models of the period they dress. Candles, lamps, or, in a few permanent theatres, electric lights, illumine the stage, but lighting for 66 THE CHINESE DRAMA artistic purpose is not included in the Chinese theory of dramatic art. The Chinese differ from many other Eastern people in that they understand the ancient sym- bols woven or painted or cut into their decoration and continue to utilize them to tell a story or re- flect an early superstition — to protect, to ridicule, to praise. Tae-Keih, or Great Monad, is a significant symbol in Celestial design. It represents the dual- istic principle of man and woman (the male in the female and the female in the male) ; and the harmony of the universe is supposed to depend upon the balance maintained between these two elements. This design is everywhere, on book, wall, porcelain, tablet, and brocade. It is a symbol of Chinese cosmogony. It may apply to opposites that exist in pairs — to the world and hades, to the sun and moon, to hard and soft. The great Monad symbolizes the basis of Chinese philos- ophy, science, and religion, and thus its univer- sality in decoration is inevitable. In China the dragon is the male element. He is the emblem of Heaven as, since B. C. 206, he has been the device of emperours. He is a stage character and appears in apparent flesh as well as in sinuous embroidery. Although he is wing- less he has the power to rise in the air at will. As the sender of rains and floods and the ruler of s»b THE KIVE-CE,\WED IMPERIAL DRAGON COSTUME AND SYMBOLIC DESIGN 67 the clouds he dominates the type of village stage performance which is arranged during a too rainy season to pray for dry weather. The earth dragon marks the course of rivers. The monkey too is immortalized. He is sup- posed to have existed before there was a Heaven and earth — where we are not informed. He de- feated the generals of Heaven in battle and was finally captured by Buddha, in the end to be re- leased from earth wanderings by a mighty traveler. The fox is a comic symbol whose stage "busi- ness" seems limitless. He may be either man or woman, and practises every deceit. His glance is said to be as efficacious as a drop of benzine for removing spots, and soiled garments are left before his shrine. The god of thunder association is called Lei Shen. His birthday is on the twenty-fourth of the sixth moon, and during the three weeks which preceed this date the people feast in his honour. He has three eyes and rides a tiger. There are many gods in the likeness of men. In the third century the present god of war was a famous general named Kuan Yii. He slept quietly for twelve hundred years until, in 1594, he was deified and became known as Kuan Ti. He is usually in armour and carries a long weapon. Confucians call him the military sage. To the 68 THE CHINESE DRAMA Buddhists he is the god of protection, and to the Taoists the minister of Heaven. In popular usage he is also the head of the military. Although habit is in a great measure responsible for the continuing faith in deity prescience and protec- tion, it is interesting commentary on the popular European legend that China's martial spirit is not awake, to recall that a picture of Kuan Ti hangs in every tent and officer's camp of her million and a half soldiers, and that the god of war is the patron of many trades and professions. The theatre god is in the likeness of Ming Huang, the eighth century emperour who estab- lished a school for actors in the garden of his palace. While most actors have another patron saint to whom they make added sacrifice, they also worship the theatre god to be saved from laughing upon the stage. The image of Ming Huang is seen in theatres. The symbol called age represents a force to be placated that is used at birthday celebrations of gods and mortals and finds place upon the stage. For festival use "age" is of carved and gilded wood and is about four feet high; as a motif it decorates many surfaces of porcelain and silk, and its general popularity is a common expression of the psychic effect in associated ideas. The ideograph for happiness and for bat are both pronounced as "fu" and the Chinese wit T/?(/f7der- (jo