Baihua ting 百花亭 (The Pavilion of One Hundred Flowers), An Anonymous Zaju Play , Part I

Abstract

Baihua ting 百花亭 (The Pavilion of One Hundred Flowers), An Anonymous Zaju Play, Part I1 Shu-chu Wei (bio) and Catherine Swatek (bio) Translators' Introduction "The Pavilion of One Hundred Flowers," whose full title is "Flaunting Romantic Elegance, Wang Huan Ascends the Pavilion of One Hundred Flowers" (Cheng fengliu Wang Huan Baihua ting 逞風流王煥百花亭), is one of many love stories between a scholar and a courtesan presented in Yuan Dynasty variety plays (zaju 雜劇). It follows the familiar formula for such stories in Chinese literature: the scholar and the courtesan fall in love; he moves in with her, spends all his money, and soon after is chased out by the courtesan's "mother," who then marries her "daughter" to a rich client.2 The courtesan sends her lover jewelry and money so that he can take the imperial examination or join the military. He passes the examination or succeeds on the battlefield, becoming an official or officer. The two are reunited, and the rich client is punished. Unlike most other Yuan zaju plays of this kind, in which the courtesan takes the singing role, this one features the scholar as the singing role and shows how he works to achieve his goals of earning merit on the battlefield and success in marriage. In two scenes of Baihua ting that enhance the humorous treatment of this plot, the male lead ridicules himself for being the lover of a courtesan. One of these is an inserted comic skit in which two scholars at the Imperial Academy who are competing to monopolize a courtesan are joined by the male lead, who steps in as peacemaker and ends up laughing at himself for being a failed old hand at the game of love in the entertainment quarters. In another incident, the male lead disguises himself as a vendor to visit his former lover, who is tightly guarded in a temple by the military officer her mother has forced her to marry. While hawking his wares, the handsome, talented, and romantically elegant scholar ridicules himself for his funny disguise and clownish hawking for the sake of a courtesan. It takes an excellent actor to be both the male lead who sings throughout the play and the comic butt. That [End Page 191] he is willing to stoop so low to see the courtesan shows how devoted he is to her. Both incidents add more than a pinch of humor to the comedy and distinguish Baihua ting from other Yuan Dynasty scholar-courtesan romances. The courtesan in this play is able to write poetry, making her one of only five courtesan poets portrayed in extant Yuan zaju.3 At their initial chance encounter, she enchants the male lead by reciting the first two lines of a quatrain and he continues with the next two, which launches their relationship. When she is under house arrest in the temple, she writes a song lyric expressing how much she misses her lover and sends it to him by way of an acquaintance who is a vendor. When Wang ventures into the temple disguised as a vendor and finds her, she urges him to seek military achievement and gives him money for travel expenses, composing another song lyric of encouragement. The poems are adequate expressions of her feelings and situations, demonstrating that she is worthy of his devotion. This play is an excellent comedy. Some of the arias are pleasantly humorous, the plot development is well-organized and interesting, and the characterization is striking. Although we do not know who wrote it, Baihua ting compares favorably with zaju written by the best Yuan playwrights. Because the play is anonymous, it is hard to pin down when it was written. The story about Wang Huan circulated during the reign of the Southern Song emperor Duzong 宋度宗 (1265–1274). A southern play, "Wang Huan" (Wang Huan xiwen 王煥戲文), was popular during the Song, and was written into the zaju form sometime in the Yuan.4 In Xu Wei's 徐渭 (1521–1593) Nanci xulu 南詞敘錄 (A record of southern drama) a play titled Baihua ting is listed under the category "old works in the Song and Yuan" 宋元舊篇.5 This play is listed in the table of...