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Downloaded 4.0 License _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien B2 voor dit chapter en dubbelklik nul hierna en zet 2 auteursnamen neer op die plek met and): 0 _full_articletitle_deel (kopregel rechts, vul hierna in): The Mask of Comedy in ‘a Couple of Soles‘ _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 230 Hegel Chapter 18 The Mask of Comedy in A Couple of Soles Robert E. Hegel Offstage By the seventeenth century, plays of the chuanqi tradition had become a favor- ite theatrical form for China’s cultured elite. Highly educated writers composed these operatic texts to avail themselves of the opportunity to write great amounts of verse for the arias as much as to craft a meaningful and entertain- ing story. These plays were too long to present in a single session; either they were performed over several days or, more likely, only selected scenes were ever staged. To get the whole story or to mull over the emotional power of the arias, readers could refer to the printed versions of these plays published, most often in series, by major printing houses in lower Yangzi region cities. Although at this distance in time we cannot know just how, when, and where a particular play was staged, we can be sure that reading their scripts was a widespread practice among the elite. Scholars of a later age must consider how the realities of their life experiences shaped their reception of the plays. Peace and social stability were relatively new when Li Yu’s 李漁 (1610–1680) comic opera Bimu yu 比目魚 (A Couple of Soles, 1661) first appeared.1 The Ming empire having collapsed in the 1640s, the country was still being pacified as the Manchus consolidated their Qing state. Devastation in the major Jiang- nan cities, widespread loss of life, and conflicting loyalties had scattered Chi- na’s cultured class and thrown into question the values of the late Ming literati. In particular, this meant challenging the sensuous courtesan culture and the leisure and indulgence that many had pursued during the 1620s and 1630s. That world had fallen apart just at its glittering height: widespread natural and man-made disasters produced roving bands of brigands, robbers, and rebels, one of whom took Beijing in 1644, causing the last Ming emperor to kill his empress and daughters before hanging himself north of the imperial palace. 1 The text appears in Li Yu quanji 李漁全集 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji, 1992), vol. 5, and in Liweng chuanqi shizhong jiaozhu 笠翁傳奇十種校注, ed. Wang Xueqi 王学奇, Huo Xianjun 霍现俊, and Wu Xiuhua 吴秀华 (Tianjin: Tianjin guji, 2009). An English translation is Li Yu, A Couple of Soles 比目魚, trans. Shen Jing and Robert E. Hegel (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2019). © Robert E. Hegel, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004438200_020 Robert E. Hegel - 9789004438200 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NCDownloaded 4.0 license. from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:34:05PM via free access _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien B2 voor dit chapter en dubbelklik nul hierna en zet 2 auteursnamen neer op die plek met and): 0 _full_articletitle_deel (kopregel rechts, vul hierna in): The Mask of Comedy in ‘a Couple of Soles‘ _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 The Mask of Comedy in ‘a Couple of Soles‘ 231 To write a comedy when such events were fresh memories in people’s minds was not a common activity among China’s scholarly playwrights. But then Li Yu was an exceptional person.2 His writing activities were many-faceted: he was famous (or infamous) for writing guidebooks for gardening and on how to select the best concubines, and for his short stories, poems, and essays, in ad- dition to his writing for the theater. He also compiled two massive collections of administrative texts in the 1660s, including his own observations on judicial punishments, imprisonment, and even categories of crime. Beyond his serious interests in governing and despite all recent events, Li Yu could still boast: “Broadly speaking, everything I have ever written was intended to make people laugh.” 大約弟之詩文雜著， 皆屬笑資.3 Most of his plays were light-hearted romantic comedies, very much in line with the scholar-beauty (caizi-jiaren 才子佳人) fashion in escapist fiction that circulated during the first decades of Qing rule. He almost certainly wrote the bawdy parody of that genre, Rou pu- tuan 肉蒲團 (The Carnal Prayer Mat), although he did not acknowledge doing so.4 Li Yu’s avowed purpose in writing A Couple of Soles was to promote tradi- tional virtues—to echo the new Qing emphasis on behavioral standards and their opposition to the hedonistic lifestyle. And sure enough, loyalty to the state and fidelity in marriage are the two major themes interwoven through the play. Neither is caricatured, at least not directly. But as we will see, there was a dark side to Li Yu’s humor in this play as backdrop to its superficial amusements. Love Conquers All (Sort of) The play begins with the first of its major narrative strands, a love story: a nice- ly conventional young, hard-working, and gifted Confucian scholar—an or- phan, just to avoid any family objections—sees and falls in love with the teen-aged daughter of a beautiful actress. Just at that time the girl’s father is forming a “youth troupe” in which this girl, Liu Miaogu 劉藐姑 or Fairy Liu, will play all the central female dan roles. In order to get to be near her, the young 2 The most thorough, and most lively, biography of Li Yu is by Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988). See also Huang Lizhen 黃麗貞, Li Yu yanjiu 李漁研究 (Taibei: Chun wenxue, 1974), and Jing Shen, “The Playwright and His Art,” in Li Yu, A Couple of Soles, 239–70, esp. 241–44. 3 Li Yu, Yijia yan quanji 一家言全集, in Li Yu quanji, 1.219; trans. Hanan, Invention, 75. 4 Li Yu, The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou putuan), trans. Patrick Hanan (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990). Robert E. Hegel - 9789004438200 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:34:05PM via free access 232 Hegel scholar Tan Chuyu 譚楚玉 abandons his higher social status and joins the troupe by answering an advertisement for an actor to perform the painted-face or jing roles. But his superior skill in memorization and his assertive manner soon win him the privilege to play sheng or leading male roles—opposite Fairy Liu—just as he has been longing to do. Tan’s initial naughty plans for a quick seduction, glossed by professions of deep attraction, are quickly crushed by the troupe’s internal rule: no fraterniza- tion between the sexes, a rule strictly enforced by their patron deity Erlang 二郎神—who makes no appearance in the play, by the way. But while the young couple grow in devotion to each other, they must reserve their steamy glances for onstage performances in costume. Any greater intimacy is totally out of the question. However, Fairy Liu’s mother, aptly named Liu Jiangxian 劉降仙 or Fallen Angel,5 has other plans for the girl. That is, she wants her daughter to follow in her own footsteps by taking on selected wealthy lovers as a means to build up the family nest-egg. Despite Fairy’s adamant refusal to compromise her chastity, Fallen Angel arranges a match for her with an odious rich man, Qian Wanguan 錢萬貫 (Moneybags Qian)—and receives a thousand ounces of silver in exchange. On the day that Fairy is supposed to go to Moneybags’s house, she changes the program for the day’s performance to include a scene from a famous older play, Jingchai ji 荊釵記 (The Thorn Hairpin). Its heroine feels that she has been abandoned by her husband, and she jumps into a river to drown herself. As it happens, this performance takes place on a stage overhanging a river, too— and after denouncing her besotted suitor quite directly, Fairly Liu leaps to her watery death. Tan Chuyu, onstage as her husband, quickly realizes that Fairy has taken this drastic action to preserve her commitment to him. And without a second thought, he too leaps in and disappears in the current. Implications behind the Love Story At that point of suspense, about half-way through the play, the first day’s per- formance may well have concluded. So I’ll stop here and make some observa- tions about this part of the plot. First, the commercial nature of society is manifested repeatedly in this play. Everyone and everything would seem to be for sale: performances onstage and off (pretending to be in love with suitors, in particular), positions in local government, useful connections, and of course, 5 Jiangxian is more literally, “fallen immortal,” but “angel” has been used for prostitutes in the U.S. No connection with Biblical stories of Lucifer is intended by this rendition of her name. Robert E. Hegel - 9789004438200 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:34:05PM via free access The Mask of Comedy in ‘a Couple of Soles‘ 233 flirtation and sex. Not only is the mother willing to sell herself—although only for the right price—she and Moneybags talk about her daughter as if Fairy were simply property to be disposed of as needed for economic gain and per- sonal gratification. Moneybags has other concubines, of course; more is what he wants, his lust—like her greed—being seemingly insatiable. So much for maternal concern and affection for her offspring! By marked contrast, Fairy despises her mother, not surprisingly, but shows her all courtesy and appropriate respect as befits a filial daughter.
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