Scene 7: The Schoolroom
T’ang Hsien-tsu (1550–1616)
CH’EN TSUI-LIANG:
Droning verses, re-revising
lines composed last spring,
pondering, my belly filled,
the taste of the noontime tea;
ants climb up the table leg
to skirt the inkslab pool,
bees invade the window
to raid the blooms in my vase.
Here in the Prefect’s residence I, Ch’en Tsui-liang, have “hung my bed curtain” so that I may instruct the daughter of the house, following family tradition, in the Classic of Odes. The mistress, Madam Tu, is treating me with the greatest kindness. Now that breakfast is over I shall immerse myself for a while in the Odes.
(He intones.)
“Kuan-kuan cry the ospreys
on the islet in the river.
So delicate the virtuous maiden,
a fit mate for our Prince,” 1
“Fit,” that is to say, “fit”; “mate,” that is to say, “seeking.” (He looks about.) How late it gets, and still no sign of my pupil. Horribly spoiled. Let me try three raps on the cloud board. (He raps the cloud board.) Fragrance, summon the young mistress for her lesson.
(Enter BRIDAL TU, followed by SPRING FRAGRANCE bearing books.)
BRIDAL TU:
Jao Ti Yu
Lightly adorned for morning,
to library leisurely strolling,
unconcerned I face
table’s gleam by window’s brightness.
SPRING FRAGRANCE:
Words of Worth from the Ancients
—What a deadly thought
but when I’m through
I’ll be able to teach the parrot to order tea.
(They greet CH’EN.)
BRIDAL: Our best respects, esteemed sir.
FRAGRANCE: We hope you’re not vexed, esteemed sir.
CH’EN: As the Rites prescribe, “It is proper for a daughter at first cockcrow to wash her hands, to rinse her mouth, to dress her hair, to pin the same, to pay respects to her father and mother.” Once the sun is up then each should attend to her affairs. You are now a pupil and your business is to study: you will need to rise earlier than this.
BRIDAL: We shall not be late again.
FRAGRANCE: We understand. Tonight we won’t go to bed so that we can present ourselves for our lesson in the middle of the night.
CH’EN: Have you rehearsed the portion of the Odes I presented yesterday?
BRIDAL: I have, but await your interpretation.
CH’EN: Let me hear you.
BRIDAL: (Recites.)
“Kuan-kuan cry the ospreys
on the islet in the river.
So delicate the virtuous maiden,
a fit mate for our Prince.”
CH’EN: Now note the interpretation.
“Kuan-kuan cry the ospreys”:
the osprey is a bird; “kuan-kuan,” that is to say, its cry.
FRAGRANCE: What sort of cry is that?
(CH’EN imitates the call of the osprey; FRAGRANCE ad libs an imitation of CH’EN imitating the osprey.)
CH’EN: This bird being a lover of quiet, it is on an island in the river.
FRAGRANCE: Quite right. Either yesterday or the day before, this year or last year some time, an osprey got trapped in the young mistress’s room and she set it free, and I said to myself, if I try to catch it again, I land in the river.
CH’EN: Rubbish. This is a “detached image.”
FRAGRANCE: What, a graven image? Who detached it?
CH’EN: To “image,” that is to say, to introduce thoughts of. It introduces the thought of the “delicate virtuous maiden,” who is a nice, quiet girl waiting for the Prince to come seeking her.
FRAGRANCE: What’s he seeking from her?
CH’EN: Now you are being impudent.
BRIDAL: My good tutor, to interpret the text by means of the notes is something I can do for myself. I should like you rather to instruct me in the overall significance of the Classic of Odes.
CH’EN:
Tiao Chiao Erh
Of all six Classics
the Classic of Odes is the flower
with “Airs” and “Refinements” most apt for lady’s chamber:
for practical instruction
Chiang-yüan2 bears her offspring
“treading in the print of God’s big toe”;
warning against jealousy
shine the virtues of queen and consort.
And then there are the
“Song of the Cockcrow,”
the “Lament for the Swallows,”
“Tears by the Riverbank,”
“Longings by the Han River”
to cleanse the face of rouge:
in every verse an edifying homily
to “fit a maid for husband and for family.”
BRIDAL: It seems to be a very long classic!
CH’EN: “The Odes are three hundred, but their meaning may be expressed in a single phrase”:
no more than this,
“to set aside evil thoughts,”
and this I pass to you.
End of lesson. Fragrance, fetch the “four jewels of the scholar’s study”
for our calligraphy.
FRAGRANCE: Here are paper, ink, brushes, and inkstone.
CH’EN: What sort of ink is this supposed to be?
BRIDAL: Oh, she brought the wrong thing. This is “snail black,” for painting the brows.
CH’EN: And what sort of brushes?
BRIDAL: (Laughing.) Mascara brushes.
CH’EN: Never did I see such things before! Take them away, take them away. And what sort of paper is this?
BRIDAL: Notepaper woven by the Tang courtesan Hsüeh T’ao.3
CH’EN: Take it away, take it away. Bring such as was woven by the noble inventor of paper, the ancient Ts’ai Lun. And what sort of inkstone? Is it single or double?
BRIDAL: It’s not single, it’s married.
CH’EN: And the “eye” patterns on it—what sort of eyes?
BRIDAL: Weeping eyes.4
CH’EN: What are they weeping about?—Go change the whole lot.
FRAGRANCE: (Aside.) Ignorant old rustic! (To CH’EN.) Very well. (She brings a new set) Will these do?
CH’EN: (Examines them.) All right.
BRIDAL: I believe I could copy some characters. But Fragrance will need your hand, sir, to guide her brush.
CH’EN: Let me see how you write. (As BRIDAL writes, he watches in amazement.) Never did I see writing of this quality! What is the model?
BRIDAL: The model is “The Beauty Adorns Her Hair with Blossoms,” the style transmitted by the Lady Wei of Chin times.
FRAGRANCE: Let me do some characters in the style of “The Maid Apes Her Mistress.”
BRIDAL: Too early for that.
FRAGRANCE: Master, I beg leave to be excused—to leave the room and excuse myself. (She exits.)
BRIDAL: Esteemed tutor, may I inquire what age your lady has attained?
CH’EN: She has reached exactly sixty.
BRIDAL: If you would let me have the pattern, I should like to embroider a pair of slippers to congratulate her.
CH’EN: Thank you. The pattern should be from Mencius, “To make sandals without knowledge of the foot.”
BRIDAL: Fragrance isn’t back yet.
CH’EN: Shall I call her?
(He calls thrice.)
FRAGRANCE: (Enters.) Clapping like that—I’ll give him the clap!
BRIDAL: (Annoyed.) What have you been doing, silly creature?
FRAGRANCE: (Laughing.) Peeing. But I found a lovely big garden full of pretty flowers and willows,5 lots of fun.
CH’EN: Dear, dear, instead of studying she is off to the garden. Let me fetch a bramble switch.
FRAGRANCE: What do you want a bramble switch for?
Tiao Chiao Erh
How can a girl
take the examinations and fill an office?
All it’s for is to
read a few characters and scrawl a few crow’s-feet.
CH’EN: There were students in ancient times who put fireflies in a bag or read by the moon.
FRAGRANCE: If you use reflected moonlight
you’ll dazzle the toad up there;
as for fireflies in a bag
just think of the poor things burning!
BRIDAL: Then what about the man who tied his hair to a beam to keep from nodding off, or the scholar who prodded himself awake with an awl in the thigh?
FRAGRANCE: If you were to try
tying your hair to a beam
you wouldn’t have much left
and pricking your thighs
you’d be even scabbier than you are.
What’s so glorious about that?
(A flower vendor’s cry comes from within.)
Listen, young mistress,
a flower vendor’s cry
drowns out the drone of studies.
CH’EN: Again she distracts the young lady. This time I shall really beat her. (He moves to do so.)
FRAGRANCE: (Dodging.)
Try and beat me then,
poor little me—
tutor to young ladies
scaring this poor malefactor
within an inch of her life!
(She grabs the bramble switch and throws it to the floor.)
BRIDAL: You wicked creature, kneel at once for such rudeness to the tutor. (FRAGRANCE kneels.) Since this is her first offense, sir, perhaps it will be enough if I give her a scolding:
Tiao Chiao Erh
Your hands must not touch the garden swing,
nor your feet tread the garden path.
FRAGRANCE: We’ll see about that!
BRIDAL: If you answer back, we shall have to
scorch with an incense stick
these lips of yours that blow breezes of malice,
blind with a sewing needle
these eyes that blossom into nothing but trouble.
FRAGRANCE: And what use would my eyes be then?
BRIDAL: I insist that you
hold to the inkstone,
stand fast by the desk,
attend to “It is written in the Odes,”
be there when “the Master says,”
and do not let your thoughts wander.
FRAGRANCE: Oh, do let’s wander a little!
BRIDAL: (Seizes her by the hair.) Do you want as many
weals on your back
as there are hairs on your head?
I’ll have you show respect for the “comptroller of the household”
—the stick Madam Tu my mother keeps in her room!
FRAGRANCE: I won’t do it again.
BRIDAL: You understand then?
CH’EN: That will be enough, we shall let her go this time. Get up.
(FRAGRANCE rises to her feet.)
Except she lacks ambition for the fame of office,
instruction of the girl pupil parallels the boy’s.
Only when your lessons are completed may you return to the house.
Meanwhile, I shall exchange a few words with your father.
BRIDAL, FRAGRANCE, CH’EN: What a waste of
this new red gauze on the sunlit window.
(CH’EN exits; FRAGRANCE points scornfully at his retreating back.)
FRAGRANCE: Ignorant old ox, dopey old dog, not an ounce of understanding.
BRIDAL: (Tugs at her sleeve.) Stupid creature, “a tutor for a day is a father for a lifetime”; don’t you understand he has the right to beat you? But tell me, where is this garden of yours?
(FRAGRANCE refusing to speak, BRIDAL gives an embarrassed laugh and asks again.)
FRAGRANCE: (Pointing.) Over there, of course!
BRIDAL: What is there to look at?
FRAGRANCE: Oh, lots to look at, half a dozen pavilions, one or two swings, a meandering stream one can float wine cups down, weathered T’aihu rocks on the other bank. It’s really beautiful, with all those prize blooms and rare plants.
BRIDAL: How surprising to find such a place! But now we may go back to the house.
(Envoi.)
BRIDAL:
Catkins floated on the breeze
in the Hsieh family court
FRAGRANCE:
thwarted is my desire to become
a butterfly in the western garden.
BRIDAL:
Ask not what sorrows follow spring
for they are limitless.
BRIDAL, FRAGRANCE:
Take for a while this loan
of green shade for your strolling.
Translated by Cyril Birch
The Peony Pavilion (Mu-tan t’ing), written in 1598, is a southern-style drama (see selection 213, note 49) consisting of fifty-five scenes. It celebrates the power of passion and was part of the new, humane current of thought that appeared during the waning years of the Ming dynasty. The schoolroom scene selected here is one of the two most famous scenes of the play and one of the few that is still performed. The play is much too long to be performed in toto for modern audiences.
The plot is that of a typical romantic comedy: boy meets girl; there are obstacles to their love due to family opposition coupled with a fortuitous separation or the machinations of some boorish rival; the obstacles are overcome; and the play concludes with a celebration of reunion. The theme of The Peony Pavilion is especially fantastic: Bridal Tu, the heroine, is resurrected from death by her lover, for whom she has pined away and died. She first experiences love only in dreams, then as a shade in the nether world, and finally as a real wife in the flesh. Bridal Tu’s lover is Liu Meng-mei (“Dreaming of Plum,” the name he has taken in memory of his dreamy assignation with her), who comes from a good family. He is a handsome, gifted scholar, but not simply conventional, for he also has the courage to follow his instincts borne of his devotion to Bridal Tu. Her father is Tu Pao, an official who is a Confucian rationalist and cannot believe that his daughter could come back to life through the strength of love.
The romanized transcriptions before the verse portions of the text refer to different aria patterns.
T’ang Hsien-tsu, the playwright, passed the metropolitan examinations at age thirty-three and began his career as a dramatist while serving in Nanking as a secretary under the board of ceremony. For more information concerning him, see selection 77.
1. The first stanza of the first poem in the Classic of Odes (see selection 16). Actually a folk love lyric, this, like many more of the Odes, was traditionally interpreted in didactic fashion as expressing popular esteem for a benevolent prince. James Legge’s Victorian period translation is used here both to accord with this kind of interpretation and for the sake of its by now somewhat fustian quality.
2. See selection 16, poem no. 245.
3. See selection 43.
4. Inkstones of a highly prized variety made at Tuan-hsi in Kwangtung were decorated with patterns of “eyes” carved to follow the natural grain of the stone. If the “eyes” were not clear-cut “bright eyes,” they were known as “weeping eyes,” or, worse, “dead eyes.”
5. “Flowers and willows”: this euphemism for “syphilis” reinforces the “clap” of her previous speech. We are no doubt to assume that Bridal remains innocent of these suggestions of her maid, aimed at Tutor Ch’en.