Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play, translated and introduced by Regina S. Llamas, is another English translation of nanxi 南戲, or Southern Play, after The Lute: Kao Ming's P'i-p'a chi (1980). Unlike zaju 雜劇, or Yuan drama, and chuanqi 傳奇, or Ming drama, which have had a good number of English translations of their representative works and studies of their famous playwrights, such as Guan Hanqing 關漢卿 (ca. 1241–1320), Wang Shifu 王實甫 (ca. 1250–1337), Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616), and Li Yu 李漁 (1611–1680), nanxi is much less known and studied in the English-speaking world. The term nanxi may surface as the predecessor of chuanqi in general histories of Chinese drama, or may be mentioned in discussions of Gao Ming's 高明 (ca. 1305–ca. 1371) Pipa ji 琵琶記;1 however, the scarceness of translated nanxi texts makes its thematic focuses, artistic forms, and dramatic conventions rather obscure to English readers. With the publication of Top Graduate, an effort to fill this gap has been made thanks to Llamas, who not only translated this fifty-three-act-long play but also provided an extensive scholarly introduction that deals with most of the important issues related to nanxi and the play in question.Top Graduate is a typical nanxi that deals with an ungrateful civil service examination passer betraying his virtuous wife, who shared his hard lot before his career success. The play starts with the male protagonist, Zhang Xie 張協, a young scholar of humble origins from Chengdu 成都 Prefecture of Sichuan 四川 Province, leaving home and traveling to the imperial capital for the examination by trekking through rugged hills and unruly waters. Zhang loses his money and is beaten black-and-blue when a bandit robs him at Wuji 五磯 Mountain. Guided by the mountain god, Zhang seeks shelter in the mountain temple, where he meets a poor lass named Wang, who nurses him to recovery. In a moment of gratefulness Zhang marries Wang, but he regrets doing so immediately after he recovers and decides to continue his pursuit of officialdom through examination. For now Poorlass Wang has become an encumbrance on his way to power and social ascendancy. After Zhang Xie passes the most advanced level of the examination as a top graduate (zhuangyuan 狀元), he is offered the hand of Military Commissioner Wang Deyong's 王德用 daughter, Shenghua 勝花, for marriage, but his careless refusal of this marriage causes Shenghua's death and turns the military commissioner into his adversary. Zhang also drives away Poorlass Wang, who followed him to the capital for a reunion, and he even attempts to kill her on the route to his new official post. Coincidently, Poorlass Wang is saved by the military commissioner and his wife, who then adopt her as their daughter. In an attempt to make peace with the military commissioner Wang, Zhang Xie proposes to Wang's adoptive daughter, who turns out to be none other than his “husk wife” (zaokangqi 糟糠妻), Poorlass Wang. When the curtain falls, the story seems to end “happily,” for the male and female protagonists are reunited, the adversity between Zhang Xie and the military commissioner is resolved, and the woe of losing a daughter is mitigated by adopting another. However, rather than satisfied and persuaded, the reader is left with unsettled feelings and critical questions with the denouement. For instance, why is the ungrateful and heartless Zhang Xie not punished? What is the point of having Poorlass Wang remarry Zhang Xie, who even intended to kill her? What kinds of messages are delivered in such a story? And how is poetic justice carried out with a finale of a “grand happy reunion”? Conveniently, the translator provides some of the answers in her informative introduction.The subject of the ungrateful scholar occupies a large portion of the nanxi repertoire. In providing a historical context of Top Graduate in the introduction, Llamas indicates that the motif of the ungrateful scholar “was subsumed under the large category of marriage, which takes up one-third of the totality of extant nanxi plays, but the theme of the ungrateful scholar play prevails in popularity” (28). Revolving on the tension between career ambition and virtue, Top Graduate contains the main themes of the ungrateful scholar play. For one, a scholar's success in the examination hall does not reflect his moral integrity; on the contrary, the temptation of utilitarian gains such as status, power, and wealth may lead him astray, trampling ethical codes. Also, in the name of observing filial piety and bringing honor and prosperity to his family, a career pursuer often ends up abandoning his loved ones, pushing them to poverty or even death. Top Candidate features most of the same topics of the ungrateful scholar, and “yet these are woven through different developing lines” (38) that lead to a relatively happy ending rather than the severe punishment of the ungrateful scholar by divine power or a vengeful female (wife or lover) that one finds in other similar plays, particularly the very early ones.The reader of this translation is provided with two explanations for this difference. First, the treatment of synectics is at work in these plays, in that “the plays are not specific critiques of individual figures—in which scholars stand for a failed education system, and female characters stand for orthodox moral values” (29). The failure of the education system is broadly defined here; it includes not only the fact that the examination's only criterion of excellence is the knowledge of the Confucian texts (not the demonstration of his true ability and virtue), but also the problem that the moral downfall of the scholar can be caused by contradictory moral messages and corrupt bureaucracy. A scholar may feel compelled to get on the career path for the filial duty of “elevating the family's status” (gai menlü 改門閭), which ironically would make him deviate from the famous Confucian remark of “a son should not travel far when his parents are still alive” (fumu zai, bu yuanyou 父母在,不遠遊), neglecting his responsibility of providing and caring for his aged parents and family. The moment the scholar passes highly in the examination and steps through the door to the bureaucracy, he becomes a “good catch” in the eyes of high-ranking official families and their daughters and, more often than not, is forced to marry a daughter of nobility, abandoning his poor and virtuous wife. When the system is broken in multiple aspects and dimensions, anyone could be easily trapped in it. If Zhang Xie is portrayed as a more willing player of this failed system, Cai Yong 蔡邕 from Gao Ming's Pipa ji is depicted as an unwilling and unwitting one whose wrongdoings are all either unintentional or circumstantial. The ungrateful scholar cannot be excused and certainly should be chastised, but revenge aimed at one individual may not change the system, and the function of such a character is served when he guides the reader and audience to the failure of the system.The translator's second explanation for Top Graduate's rather moderate ending is the work of retribution (or requital) in the play. In premodern China, the belief in retribution was based on “the theory of the existence of a close relationship between heavenly and human actions.” “The retribution attitude consisted in expecting propitious and unpropitious events in relation to previous conduct, in expecting punishment or reward in the present life and after death (i.e. in the underworld and/or in successive reincarnations.”2 This belief was present in every aspect of Chinese society and, of course, was also reflected in Chinese literature, particularly in vernacular fiction and drama. For the ungrateful scholar play in nanxi, retribution serves as an underscored integral principle at work for dramatic development and moral caution. As explained by Llamas in her introduction, if some earlier nanxi punish the ungrateful scholar, Top Graduate rewards the virtuous wife: Poorlass Wang miraculously survives poverty, abandonment, and even attempted murder, and her former status of a gentry lady and her affluent lifestyle are returned to her when she is adopted into the military commissioner's family. She is even given a chance to pardon her husband, Zhang Xie, who repays her kindness with ingratitude. On the one hand, as the metonymic figure of “orthodox moral values” and the embodiment of heavenly retribution, her character delivers the message of “requiting injury with kindness”3 and forgiveness, while on the other hand, by praising and rewarding her, the play censures and reproves Zhang Xie, although indirectly and without severe consequences.In addition to the play's subject matter and its denouement, the eighty-eight-page-long introduction also deals with other aspects of Top Graduate, including its dating, authorship, prologues, and dramatic structure: scenes, roles, comedy, and music. This not only is a thorough and informative study of Top Graduate but also contributes valuable research on nanxi.A ten-page extensive and meticulous discussion is dedicated to the dating of the play. Llamas's translation is based on the play's edition included in the Yongle dadian 永樂大典 (Yongle Collectanea, 1408). As the earliest extant nanxi play, the dating of Top Graduate is entangled with the debate of nanxi's inception, traced back to the mid-sixteenth century, that has drawn much scholarly attention. There are two main theories regarding the appearance of nanxi, and one dates it in either the late Northern Song or mid-Southern Song dynasty, whereas the other dates it in the Yuan dynasty. The famous Ming litterateurs Wang Shizhen 王世貞 (1526–1590) and Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521–1593) supported the Song dates, and the modern scholar Qian Nanyang 錢南揚 (1899–1987) seconded this viewpoint with some internal evidence from the text of Top Graduate. The proponents of a Yuan date, including the Japanese scholar Aoki Masaru 青木正兒 (1887–1964) and the Korean scholar Yang Hoi-seok 梁會錫, “have based their research mostly on the discussion of the tune titles and possible dates of composition” (12–16). The tunes from Top Graduate “appear in six southern formularies from the Ming to the Qing” (14), including the reputable Huizuan yuanpu nanqu jiugong zhengshi 彙纂元譜南曲九宮正始 (Compilations of Yuan Formulary of the Correct Original Nine Southern Modes) by Xu Qingqing 徐慶卿 (1574–1636) and Niu Shaoya 鈕少雅 (1563–1661), who dated Top Graduate to the Yuan dynasty. However, to Llamas, the dating of Top Graduate as the determinate play for the inception of nanxi “is largely built on incidental and conjectural evidence” (17), as the previous studies overlooked the process of creation or “the inherent protean nature of the theater and the mutability of its dramatic texts” (11). As evidenced by Zang Maoxun's 臧懋循 (1550–1620) editorial effort of canonizing Yuan zaju, Llamas adds, “We would have to take into account an established tradition of revision, adaptation, and expansion of earlier stories to new genres, as well as the inherent instability of dramatic texts prone to practice of rewriting and revision” (16).As informed by the translator, very little information is available about the author of Top Graduate, Nine Mountain Society (Jiushan Shuhui 九山書會). Shuhui, a kind of writing guild consisting of literati and artists of low social standing in the Song and Yuan dynasties, claimed authorship for some early Chinese dramas. Generally, only scanty references to such groups of writers can be found in plays and Song dynasty memoirs. However, in Top Graduate, the author has a distinct presence not only in the two prologues but also in some acts of the play. The authorial voice (delivered by both mo 末 and sheng 生 roles) in the prologues “describes a troupe in an urban competition, promoting an original spectacle that promises, above all else, to make them [the audience] laugh and keep them entertained” (23). There are also self-referential allusions and/or messages in the play proper that indicate the author either “had a clear understanding of the form” (1) of nanxi or attempted embedding “the name of the member of the writing society responsible for the play” (18).In the remaining part of the introductory discussion, the reader is provided with some specific features of Top Graduate. For instance, the play's text in the Yongle Collectanea was “not divided into acts,” and it was only done so “according to the entrance and exit of roles” by Qian Nanyang more than five hundred years later (43). Unlike zaju and chuanqi, the play as an archetypal nanxi lacks keys and modes (gongdiao 宮調), which may mean “a freedom from the normative strictures these keys and modes seem to have involved” (84–85). The play is uniquely introduced with two prologues by both mo and sheng roles, and the first prologue contains a short piece of All Keys (zhugongdiao 諸宮調), a form of chantefable popular in the Song, Jin, and Yuan times. The plot development follows the two parallel threads of Zhang Xie and Poorlass Wang, juxtaposed with each other; and humor and comic routine, as requisite of Southern plays, are significantly present in the play and “inherent to its structure” (62). In addition, Llamas's in-depth discussion on roles in relation to Top Graduate in particular and to the classical Chinese drama in general will be very helpful to her readers. Llamas indicates there are seven roles (sheng, dan 旦, jing 淨, mo, chou 丑, wai 外, and tie 貼)4 in Top Graduate, and among them “the sheng as the main male role appears for the first time in this play” (54). Characters are always introduced by their role type, and cross-gender performance is common in that “actors can play both male and female roles” (57). Three role types—jing, chou, and mo—play comic routines in the play: while a jing or chou cracks a joke, the mo responds and caps it, and the mo also “constantly reminds the crowd of the comic role's ill-judged and foolish actions” (66). Moreover, one finds Llamas's explanation on the relation of actors, roles, and characters quite illuminating, as it states that “roles mediate between the actor and the character the actor plays,” and “the relationship between the actor and the role is one of skill: it refers to the sets of competences an actor needs to represent a certain character (or groups of characters with the same traits) on stage,” while “the relationship between the role and the character, in contrast, is determined by how the role makes use of this set of acquired skills to present the character (or type's) temperament” (59).Llamas has done a wonderful job of translating the Chinese play text into English. Although Top Graduate is written in standard vernacular, not in local dialect (Wenzhou 溫州 dialect in this case), the play contains a large portion of colloquial expressions that are rather obscure to a modern translator. As the earliest extant nanxi play, Top Graduate is close to the folk tradition in aesthetics and language; thus, the choice of the language register in English should be able to reflect these features. Llamas's translation is clear, smooth, and readable, providing her readers with a pleasant and enjoyable reading experience. In addition to the translated play text and the introduction, the book includes some other paratexts, such as “Dramatis Personae,” “Synopsis of Acts,” “Roles in Acts,” and annotations/notes that are also helpful for reading and understanding the play. If the translated play text attracts both general readers and students of Chinese literature, the introduction mainly targets the latter. The introduction, to be a little nitpicky, is long-winded and overly ambitious to include all of the important aspects of Top Graduate and nanxi. A reader could easily be put off by such a long scholarly deliberation before reading the play proper. A possible alternative to this is to only deal with the play's subject matter and its artistic treatments in the introduction and then place the other scholarly discussions, such as the debates on dating and authorship and the investigation of generic conventions such as roles and music, in appendices after the play text.