225 Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood: Early Chinese
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Book Reviews / T’oung Pao 99 (2013) 212-248 225 Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood: Early Chinese Plays on the Three Kingdoms. By Wilt L. Idema and Stephen H. West (ed. and transl.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2012. xxx + 469 p. Ill. This volume and its elder twin, the 2010 Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals: Eleven Early Chinese Plays (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2010), are siblings to Wilt L. Idema and Stephen H. West’s previous translations and studies of early Chinese drama: their version of one of the best-known works of pre-modern dramatic literature, The Moon and the Zither: Wang Shifu’s Story of the Western Wing (Berke- ley: Univ. of California Press, 1991), and their collection of historical materials in Chinese Theater, 1100-1450: A Source Book (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982). Like their brethren, the two recent volumes present lucid and readable translations buttressed by introductions, notes, and appendices, whose unassuming clarity almost masks the broad erudition, precise scholarship, and insightful analysis that informs them. Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals contains translations of eleven early Chinese dramas on a range of themes and subject matters, and pro- vides in its introduction and appendices a brief but comprehensive overview of theater history, performance practice, formal characteristics of the plays, textual transmission, and reception.1 Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood translates early Northern dramas (zaju 雜劇) and other texts dealing specifically with the Three Kingdoms story cycle, and in its introductory material focuses on the develop- ment of this narrative tradition. Had I not agreed to write this review, I most likely would not have read the book continuously from the first page to the last. I would have studied the Intro- duction, read the first play (Tripartite Oath), then jumped to a favorite (Single Sword Meeting) or to an effort that piqued my curiosity (how on earth did they translate Dream of Western Shu?) before poking around in the appendices. Some of the other plays might well have waited until I had occasion to assign them to a class. I consider myself fortunate that the present task has forced me to do oth- erwise, to work my way from cover to cover, as if reading a novel; for such a reading reveals the parallel unfolding of two stories, each, on its own, complex and far from unambiguous, proceeding along opposite chronological vectors, and yet reaching a simultaneous and interwoven climax with the final (in one sense; in another sense, originary) play, Dream of Western Shu. The first story is the saga of the Three Kingdoms itself—the civil wars at the close of the Han dynasty, the resulting tripartite division of the subcelestial realm, and the reunification of the empire by the Jin晉 dynasty in 280. These historical events and the historiographic records thereof formed the nucleus of a variety of narrative traditions, whose richness is already reflected in Pei Songzhi’s 裴松之 1) Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals has been reviewed by Kim Besio in Journal of Asian Studies 70.1 (2011): 218-19; by Hongchu Fu in CHINOPERL Papers 29 (2010): 261-67; by Moonkyong Kim in Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 41 (2011): 414-32; and by Tian Yuan Tan in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21.3 (2011): 400-402. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685322-9913P0007 226 Book Reviews / T’oung Pao 99 (2013) 212-248 (372-451) commentary to Chen Shou’s 陳壽 (233-297) canonical Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi 三國志). The best-known treatment of the extra- canonical legends is the fifteenth-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi yanyi 三國志演義). Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood focuses on earlier treatments of the story cycle in colloquial literary genres, in particular the dramatic literature of the mid-thirteenth through mid-fifteenth centuries. At the heart of the volume are translations of seven plays representing the major episodes in what the colloquial traditions constructed as the core of the Three Kingdoms saga: the brotherhood of Liu Bei 劉備 (Liu Xuande 劉玄德), scion of the Han house and Emperor of the Western Han, and his comrades Guan Yu 關羽 (Guan Yunchang 關雲長) and Zhang Fei 張飛 (Zhang Yide 張翼德). Read in succession, the plays present something like a continuous narrative, launched in Tripartite Oath (Liu Guan Zhang Taoyuan san jieyi 劉關張桃園三結義) by the three heroes’ meeting and swearing oaths of brotherhood, and ending in Dream of Western Shu (Guan Zhang shuang fu Xi Shu meng 關張雙赴西蜀夢) with Guan and Zhang’s deaths and the call for vengeance that will doom Liu Bei’s imperial project. Between this alpha and omega appear the plot to destroy the tyrannical general Dong Zhuo by deploying the beauty Diao Chan, in Interlocking Rings (Jinyun tang meinü lianhuan ji 錦雲堂美女連環計); Guan Yu’s display of loyalty to his sworn brothers during enforced service to their rival Cao Cao, in Refusal of Gold (Guan Yunchang yiyong cijin 關雲長義勇辭金); Liu Bei’s narrow escape from disaster and his early victories, in Xiangyang Meeting (Liu Xuande du fu Xiangyang hui 劉玄德 獨赴襄陽會); the enlistment of master strategist Zhuge Liang, in Burning the Stores (Zhuge Liang Bowang shaotun 諸葛亮博望燒屯); and Guan Yu’s defense of Jingzhou against erstwhile allies from Wu, in Single Sword Meeting (Guan dawang dandao hui 關大王單刀會). This series of episodes leaves out many elements of the larger story cycle, including such major chapters as the pivotal battle at Red Cliff. And, as one might expect, the story told by the assemblage of dramas is not an entirely consistent one: the characters and versions of events found in a given play sometimes diverge from those of the historical sources, of other narrative adaptations, and even of other plays in this collection. And yet the gaps and contradictions, by reminding the reader of the vast and polyphonic narrative traditions immanent behind the texts selected for translation, only add to the depth and tragic sweep of the story that the plays work together to tell. West and Idema present the earliest available edition of each play, but have chosen to highlight the indeterminacy of the material by providing later, variant versions of several plays as well as parallel selections from other genres. That is to say, while presenting the story (a story) of Liu, Guan, and Zhang, they simulta- neously tell another story as well: a story of the textual tradition of early drama. The study of editions and textual transmission has been a central theme of West and Idema’s decades-long study of early Chinese theater and dramatic literature.2 2) Representative articles from among the two scholars’ wealth of publications on this topic include West, “A Study in Appropriation: Zang Maoxun’s Injustice to Dou E,” Journal of .