The Peony Pavilion (Mudan Ting)

1. The Peony Pavilion(Mudan Ting) • Author: Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) • A student of Luo Rufang (1515-88) • Known for his “dream” plays, that advocated qing as the “distinguishing feature of human existence” • Honored as Chinese Shakespeare • Synopsis: A love story between a poor young scholar and a ghost lady, who resurrected by the scholar for whom she had pined and died • A romantic comedy • A story of the fantastic nature • A “Southern Style” (Nan xi) drama (of great length, with large cast and many scenes, fifty-five in this case) • Preface date: 1598, near Shakespeare’s time • First performed in a musical style know as Kunqu in early 1600s. • Widely circulated in woodcut print decorated with illustrations (symbiosis of words and pictures) soon.

2. Characteristics of the Play • Form: • Written in a refined vernacular prose and lyrical song • Dialogue laced with rich allusions to history and fiction • Content: • A fiction, but a conflation of fiction and reality • Major protagonists were fictional • Boundaries and gaps between yin and yang, the phenomenal and the fantastic, the man and woman…were crossed and bridged • Sanctity of love, sex, and marriage

3. Highlights of the Play • “Wandering in the Garden” and “Waking from a Dream” remain the most performed and watched plays

4. Writing Women in the Ming • Reading women became writing women; they read The Peony Pavilion differently than men • Saw Du Liniang as their alter egos • Created their self-images and re-imagined the tales to satisfy their shifting moods and needs • Used it as a means by which they developed a life-long devotion to intellectual and literary pursuits • Used it as a means by which they transcended their sad feelings (such as danger of fatality) and achieved a spiritual salvation. • Used it as a model for creating and fulfilling their dream of conjugal/companionate love

5. Women Writing about The Peony Pavilion • Writing women wrote commentaries on The Peony Pavilion • The Peony pavilion: Commentray Edition by Wu Wushan’s Three Wives • They were advocates of qing (love feeling) • Put themselves in a situation conflicting with Confucian ideas of “qing should be checked by li (rites, moral code • formed new ideas, “sincerity of heart” and “the primacy of qing,” to challenge Confucian morality

6. Protagonists • Liu Mengmei (Liu Dream-of-Apricot) • Appears first to lament his financial straits and talk about his dream • Entered a garden and saw and lovely lady standing beneath a flowering apricot • The lady said that he must meet to set foot on the road to love and high office • Du Li’niang (Bridal Du) • Wandering in the garden: • Laments that she has “reached the age to ‘pin up my hair’ without plan made for her betrothal to a suitable partner • Waking from a dream • Has a dream in which Liu Mengmei enticed her into love-making (play of clouds and rain)

7. Erotica in Du Li’niang Waking from Her Dream • Du expressed her feeling about the lingering dream: • There [beside the peony pavilion, beyond the railings lined with tree peonies] together we found the “joys of cloud and rain” • “Passion by passion, and indeed a thousand fond caresses, and million tenderness passed between us.” • “After our bliss was accomplished he led me back to where I had been sleeping, and many times said, ‘Rest now.’”

8. Bridal Du’s Lovesickness and Pursuing More Dream • Love experience in the dream is a case of “No fluttering side by side of splendid phoenix wings/between hearts the one minuet thread from root to tip of the magic horn” • Du wants her dream come back: • “Now that my maid is gone. I can pursue my dream.” • “Ah, but what a story there to tell of yesterday, when the young scholar sought a poem on his willow branch, before he forced our union of delight.” • “So like to life was this young scholar/who took my life into his arms./How my longings stir to recall that moment!” • “Against the weathered rock/he leaned my wilting body/then as he laid my jade limbs down/”smoke issued from jade in warmth of sun.”

9. Love in Dream or Reality • Liu Mengmei wishes to see Bridal Du in his dream after seeing her portrait • He does see her, but in reality • Du Liniang offers herself to Liu • Du Liniang comes to Liu again—more love making (see p. 173) • Their joy is disrupted by a young nun