William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably one of the most famous English poets and dramatists, whose name is still heard today, and tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet have become an inspiration to directors and filmmakers around the world. And did you know that China had “its own” Shakespeare during the same period?
Tang Xianzu (Tāng Xiǎnzǔ 汤显祖), who lived from 1550 to 1616, is known as “Chinese Shakespeare”, who created several dramatic masterpieces - “Purple Hairpin”, “Peony Pavilion”, “Nanke Story”, “Handan Dream”, which nowadays are widely studied, staged and shown to audiences on various stages of the world.
Although both Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare examined universal motives such as love and passion (incest, zoophilia, greed for power) in their works, they conveyed these motifs in their plays through peculiar principles of perception. Interestingly, zoophilia in Chinese culture is more justified than incest.
These prominent creators from two different regions lived in the 16th-17th centuries. at the junction, they created while they were far from each other, but their drama works are characterized by similar problems, heroic characters who have become symbols, love for eloquence and poetic lyrics.
Tang Xianzu (汤显祖 Tāng Xiǎnzǔ) comes from a wealthy family of writers in Linchuan (now Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province), has been educated by the best local teachers since childhood, received a classical Confucian education, and enjoyed watching Haiyan-style opera performed by a local troupe. His grandfather, a scholar of Taoism, often told his grandson the stories of the Daoist immortals. Like many talented young people in the Ming Dynasty, Tang Xianzu wanted to apply the knowledge gained in practice - to pass an exam in the civil service and to work for the benefit of the people. However, the idealized civil service proved difficult to achieve. Being very fair and principled, Tang Xianzu refused to patronize the Grand Secretary (de facto Prime Minister) Zhang Juzheng, along with serving him, which resulted in failures in the examinations as many as four times. And only after the death of the influential man, 12 years after the first attempt, at the age of 34, Tang Xianzu managed to pass the exam and become a top official. However, by relinquishing custody of the new Grand Secretary, He was appointed to Nanjing (the first capital of the Ming Dynasty) to hold an insignificant office of ritual officer. Seeing much injustice, corruption, greed among the officials, he wrote a petition to the emperor criticizing certain top officials close to the emperor’s environment. Following this letter, Tang Xianzu was peculiarly punished and appointed to hold the office of master (the governor of the smallest administrative unit appointed and subordinate to him by the emperor) in small, insignificant, remote districts. One of the most important is Suichang (in the west of Zhejiang Province), a mountainous, small district where Tang Xianzu hoped to realize his ideals of ensuring good governance for the well-being of all people. He tried to help people not only in their daily activities, but also to provide them with the opportunity to get an education - he established an academy with a library, where he often visited and shared his knowledge. Here he started writing his most famous work - "Peony Pavilion". Although it gained the trust and favor of the people, it was unable to resist the injustice of the central government - the high silver and gold mining taxes imposed on its district, which weakened the country in a matter of years. Unable to help the people and resist the emperor, he went to Beijing and handed over his resignation letter to the ruler, and without his approval, he left the capital. After resigning, he returned to his native Linchuan. Here, reflecting on his experience as an official, recalling true stories and legendary stories he heard, he began to write plays intensively for Kunqu’s opera. He completed the "Peony Pavilion", wrote "Nanke Story" and "Handan Dream”.
The four most important works of Tang Xianzu are called “Tetralogy of Linchuan Dreams” (临川 四 梦 lín chuān sì mèng):
"Purple Hairpin" (紫 钗 记 Zǐ chāi jì)
“Peony Pavilion” (牡丹 亭 Mǔdān tíng)
“Nanke Story” (南柯 记 nán kē jì)
“Handan Dream" (邯郸 记 Hándān jì)
The plots of all four plays are based on the stories of the Tang Dynasty - short legendary stories included in the collection “Notes of the Taiping Era” (太平广记 Tàipíng Guǎngjì).
The Purple Hairpin tells the story of a boy, Li Yi (李益 lǐ yì), who meets the beautiful Huo Xiaoyu (霍小玉 huò xiǎo yù) of the Tang Dynasty in Chang’an (now Xi’an). Both fall in love at first sight. Li Yi finds the lost Xiaoyu hairpin and takes the opportunity to meet her lover again. The couple is getting married soon. Talented Li Yi passes the civil service exams best of all in the country and the influential official Lu decides to marry him with his daughter. However, Li Yi does not give up and remains loyal to his wife, for which he is appointed to the service at the border post. Well-behaved there, he is returned to Chang’an City, but cannot meet his wife as he remains imprisoned in Lu’s family home, whose head officer Lu still wants to see Li Yi as his son-in-law. Xiaoyu, in order to find a man, accidentally sells a purple hairpin to a girl in the Lu family, and taking advantage of it, Officer Lu hands the clip to Li Yi and tries to convince him that Xiaoyu no longer loves him. Xiaoyu, meanwhile, reaches the news that her husband lives in Lu’s family home as Officer Lu’s son-in-law. When she learns about a man's situation, she is very sorrowful, but she dreams of a prophetic dream - in a dream she sees a pair of colorfully embroidered shoes - and this image is interpreted as a harmonious unification of a pair (鞋 xié - shoes 谐 xié - harmony) due to the similar sound of words. Finally, Li Yi's friend, sympathetic to the couple, plans to invite Li Yi to admire the peonies (a symbol of love in China). They manage to escape Lu’s house and Li Yi arrives at his wife Xiaoyu. The couple’s feelings come to life and intensify again, they continue to live long and happy lives.
The plot of this play is based on the short story of the Tang Dynasty "The Story of Huo Xiaoyu" (霍小玉 传 huò xiǎo yù zhuàn)
"Peony Pavilion" - tells a passionate love story between Du Liniang (杜丽娘 - surname means wild pear and name - beautiful girl) and Liu Mengmei (柳梦梅 - surname means willow, and the name consists of a dream and a plum characters) lived at the end of the Song Dynasty. Maids persuaded Du Liniang to go for a walk in the garden, in which she falls asleep and dreams of a wonderful intellectual young man emerging from behind a willow, holding a willow twig in his hand and inviting Liniang to walk together. Later, after raining, he takes her to the Peony Pavilion, where they experience “the joy of clouds and rain” in classical Chinese, 成就 了 云雨 之 欢. Liniang instantly falls in love, and the suddenly awakened of a falling petal realizes that it was just a dream and she will not be able to live without a loved one. Soon she goes back to the Peony Pavilion, hoping to dream her lover again, but she fails. Out of love, she gets sick, still manages to paint a self-portrait and dies. Her father, Du Bao, buryies his daughter under a plum tree in the garden before leaving for his newly appointed place of service and establishes a Taoist temple of plum blossoms here, asking the Daoist nun to take care of the grave.
Du Liniang travels to the kingdom of the dungeons, but the ruler of this finds out that the girl from above is destined to experience marriage on earth, so she will have to be reborn. Three years later, in the same garden where Du Liniang is buried, Liu Mengmei, seen in a dream, walks, went to the capital to take exams to the civil service, fell ill and fell ill at the Plum Blossom Temple along the way. After healing, he meets Liniang's wandering soul, falls in love with her, recognizes that it is Du Bao's daughter buried in the garden. She asks Mengmei to unearth her grave, open the coffin and use the body for her rebirth. When you do this, your loved ones already meet like two people. Soon after, Mengmei is the best in the country to pass exams for civil service. His beloved Liniang asks his beloved to go to her father and tell him the good news of his daughter’s rebirth. However, when he leaves, his father cannot believe Liu Mengmei's words, accuses him of desecrating the remains and intends to sentence him to die. When he learns that Mengmei is the best in the country to pass the exams and cannot be so easily condemned, he passes the case on to the emperor, who finds out everything and eventually frees Liu Mengmei. Beloved ones meet again. Father Du Bao reconciles with his son-in-law and the story ends happily.
At the centre of the play is love and passion - at first love is born in a dream, later passionate feelings arise between a person and a dead soul, and finally they manifest in the earthly world between two people. The strong power of love blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead world, love overcomes all obstacles. In the introduction to this play, Tang Xianzu wrote, “I don’t know where feelings come from, but they are accompanied by deep devotion, life can turn into death, and death into life” (情 不知 所 起 ， 一 往 而 深 ， 生 则 可以 死 ， 可以 生) 。It is this picturesque, exciting embodiment of powerful, transcendent love in the play and is considered to be the greatest achievement of Tang Xianzu, which has elevated him to the heights of Chinese literature. This play, dedicated to Kunqu's opera, was shown live from start to finish - the performance lasted 22 hours, but when the playwright died, the most important scenes of the play were eventually selected.
“Nanke Story” tells the story of a brave officer, Chunyu fen (棼 棼 Chún Yúfén), who returns home after losing the commander’s confidence due to his propensity for alcohol. A huge pagoda tree grows in the backyard of his home, providing shade on a hot summer day. Here he often enjoys wine with friends. One day, returning drunk, he falls asleep on the home porch and receives messengers from the pagoda kingdom, who take Chunyu to the king. There he leads Princess Yaofang (瑶 芳 Yáofāng), who is soon appointed to rule the Southern Branch Prefecture, where he has two sons and two daughters. During the 20 years of the prefect's rule, the land has flourished - Chunyu Fen cares about people's well-being, education, curbs corruption. However, the Army of the Sandalwood Kingdom invades his estates, and Chunyu's wife, who is intimidated by it, dies. After this tragedy, Chunyu is promoted and returns to the palace to go to minister. Still, the loss of his wife weakens his position as a royal son-in-law. Jealous opponents wrongly accuse him against the king. However, Chunyu himself becomes less strict with himself, forgets discipline, returns to the hobby of wine and women. Eventually, he is released and sent home. At that moment, he wakes up and sees the yard of his house, the servants with wine containers and the guests - all the same as before going to bed. He realizes that the entire history of his 20 years of life in the Southern Branch Prefecture, full of joy and worries, was just a dream. His achievements and downturns, power and wealth, wife and children - everything that seemed so real is just an illusion. Chunyu soon unearths the root of the pagoda tree in the courtyard, where he finds a large cavity extending toward the southern branch, where he sees structures reminiscent of city walls, palaces, castles, and pavilions inhabited by an ant colony. Chunyu understands that the Pagoda Tree Kingdom and the Southern Branch Prefecture are the land inhabited by ants. He wants to protect the ants from the impending storm and the foretold collapse of the kingdom, but the verse appears stronger and all the ants disappear, the kingdom disappears. To help the people of the kingdom and his loved ones, Chunyu goes to the Buddhist temple of Chen wisdom and asks an old monk to perform rites during which the souls of all ascend to Heaven. Chunyu prays a lot and meets his father, wife and others close to him before they reach Heaven. Say goodbye to all, but do not want to divorce your beloved wife, rush with her to Heaven. And it is only thanks to the monk that he realizes once again that his wife and marriage are just an illusion. Realizes that all the desires of the material world are vanity. Realizing emptiness, Chunyu becomes a Buddha.
This story is based on the short legendary story of the Tang Dynasty, “The Story of the Commandant of the Southern Branch,” which Tang Xianzu developed into a 44-part play. To this day, the common saying in China is “the dream of the southern branch” (（南柯 梦 nán kē mèng), meaning empty illusions and desires.
“Handan Dream” is the story of one of the eight Daoist immortals (Lü Dongbin, Lǚ Dòngbīn) who descends to earth to help the immortal He complete the service of sweeping the petals of the Gates of Heaven in search of someone who can replace it. At the Handan city inn, he meets the unhappy intellectual Lu Sheng, who is frustrated with life and believes he is worth much more. Therefore, the immortal immerses Lu Sheng in a dream using a magical pillow. In a dream, Lu Sheng experiences a happy marriage, dreams of public service, becomes influential and powerful, later wrongly accused, even later rehabilitated, returns to service, reaches a respectable age, and dies. Death seems natural and leaves no room for regret. Finally, Lu Sheng wakes up and realizes that the experiences so clearly and strongly experienced, his lifelong journey was just a dream that lasted for a few moments. Lu Sheng enlightened, agrees to travel with Lü Dongbin to Heaven and become a sweeper of the flower petals of Heaven's Gate.
This play, like other works by Tang Xianzu, is based on the history of the Tang Dynasty, "Inscriptions on the World Inside the Pillow" (枕 中 记 Zhěn zhōng jì).