Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), alias Yiren, was a dramatist, poet, essayist and a profound thinker. He lived a legendary life at the end of the Ming Dynasty, styling himself Ruoshi, Hairuo, Qingyuan Taoist and Hermit of the Jade Tea Studio. He was born into an intellectual family in Linchuan (in present-day Fuzhou of Jiangxi Province) on 24 September, 1550. At the age of twelve, he was a well-known poet; when he was fourteen, he passed the imperial examination at the county level; when he was twenty-one, he passed the imperial examination at the provincial level, but not until he was thirty-four did he pass the imperial examination at the national level. He served in Nanjing successively as adviser in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices, as secretary to the Office of Imperial Affairs and as administrative aide in the Sacrifice Bureau of the Ministry of Rites. In 1591, he wrote the famous “Memorial to Impeach the Ministers and Supervisors”, criticizing the court for its misadministration since the ascendance of Emperor Shenzong and impeaching prime ministers Zhang Juzheng and Shen Shixing. As a result, he was demoted to the position of clerk in Xuwen County, Guangdong Province. A year later, he was transferred to be the magistrate of Suichang County, Zhejiang Province, where he took some enlightened measures for social development. After five years in office, he returned to his hometown, giving up all ideas of an official career and devoting himself to writing. On 29 July, 1616, he died in the Jade Tea Studio in Linchuan.
Tang Xianzu has left behind more than 2,000 poems, essays and rhymed essays, besides his chief achievement, dramatic works. His masterpieces “The Peony Pavilion” (also entitled “The Return of the Soul”), “The Handan Dream”, “The Nanke Dream” and “The Purple Hairpins” are known as the “Four Dreams of Linchuan” or the “Four Dreams of the Jade Tea Studio”. His plays, including the “Four Dreams” and “The Purple Flute”, have passed down through numerous printings in the Ming and Qing dynasties, together with his Leisurely Poems from the Red Spring Studio, Collected Poems by Tang Xianzu and The Complete Works of the Jade Tea Studio. In contemporary China, The Collected Works of Tang Xianzu edited by Qian Nanyang and Xu Shuofang was published in 1962, and The Complete Works of Tang Xianzu annotated by Xu Shuofang was published in 1999.
Although Tang Xianzu was highly esteemed in the literary drama circles, “Tang Xianzu Studies” gradually came into being in the twentieth century. The studies on Tang Xianzu, especially on his dramatic works, can be roughly divided into two stages – the first half and the second half of the twentieth century. The studies in the first half of the twentieth century inherited the tradition of the Ming and Qing dynasties in tracing the origin of the stories, composing the music for them, singing the arias and appreciating the verse, but lacked new ideas and elucidation. The researchers were confined to certain experts in drama and literary circles, including Wang Guowei, Wu Mei, Wang Jilie and Lu Qian in the early period, and Yu Pingbo, Zheng Zhenduo, Zhao Jingshen, Zhang Youlan, Jiang Jiping and Wu Zhonghan in the later period. The studies in the second half of the twentieth century, in spite of the interference of vulgar sociology and ultra-left ideology, saw a small high tide around 1957 in commemorating the 340th anniversary of Tang Xianzu’s death. Since the end of the 1970s, Tang Xianzu Studies has developed in depth. In commemorating the 366th anniversary of Tang Xianzu’s death, China’s academic circles held grand ceremonies in his native town and published a number of theses and other works, thus bringing Tang Xianzu Studies into a new era. The international symposium and the commemorative meeting held respectively in Dalian and Linchuan in 2000, with large numbers of participants and research papers, marked a new height in Tang Xianzu Studies. The conference of the China Association for Tang Xianzu Studies was held in Suichang, Zhejiang Province, for the first time in August 2001, and has been held several times in the following years, with its Journal of Tang Xianzu Studies published biannually since 2004.
To readers outside China, Tang Xianzu’s name is inseparable from his magna opus “The Peony Pavilion”, which reached Japan at the beginning of the seventeenth century. According to The Catalogue of the Royal Library in Japan, six copies of “The Peony Pavilion” (Zang Maoxun’s adapted version) published in the Ming Dynasty were kept in the Royal Library as early as 1636. “The Return of the Soul” or “The Peony Pavilion” translated into Japanese by Kishi Shunpulo was published by the Culture and Education Press in 1916. “The Return of the Soul” translated by Miyahara Minpei was published by the Tokyo National Library Publishing Association, and contained in Volume 10 of Collection of Chinese Works Translated into Japanese (1920-1924). Yiwashiro Shideo also translated “The Return of the Soul” into Japanese.
“The Peony Pavilion” also has various full-length and abridged English versions by Harold Acton, Cyril Birch, Zhang Guangqian, Wang Rongpei, Lindy Mark, Ben Wang, Xu Yuanchong and Xu Ming. The numerous translation and performances in the West have brought high acclaim to this play. According to The Drama 100, A Ranking of the Greatest of All Times (Daniel S. Burt, Facts on File, Inc. 2007), “In world drama there is no more extensive and beautiful exploration of love than Tang Xianzu’s “Mudanting” (“The Peony Pavilion”). In fifty-five scenes and a performance time of eighteen hours, “The Peony Pavilion” merits the designation of epic. Its central character, the young woman Du Liniang, embarks on a journey of discovery to reach her heart’s desire, facing down life-and-death obstacles in this world and the next. Along the way an entire culture’s values and traditions are displayed. In a western context “The Peony Pavilion” combines elements of Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Moreover, arguably it is the first great epic with a complex, believable woman protagonist. Despite its vast scope, “The Peony Pavilion” is anchored by a remarkable psychological depth and earthy realism. It turns lyrical, philosophical, satirical, fantastical, and bawdy, interweaving sentiment and humor. “The Peony Pavilion” provides one of the great entry points for an understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese classical dramatic traditions.”
Tang Xianzu has been long acclaimed as China’s Shakespeare but has not reached the Western readers in his entirety. With the 400th anniversary of the death of these two great dramatists in 2016, we offer The Complete Dramatic Works of Tang Xianzu to commemorate the historic occasion. We are relieved to have completed this endeavor after an effort of nearly two decades, and we hope that this English edition has presented the full grandeur of these plays. We shall be eagerly awaiting the comments from the international reading public.