PUTTING ON A PLAY IN AN UNDERWORLD COURTROOM: THE “MINGPAN” (INFERNAL JUDGMENT) SCENE IN TANG XIANZU’S MUDAN TING (PEONY PAVILION)

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 As Tina Lu has argued at length, questions of personal identity are at stake throughout the play: Are characters who they claim to be? Can we trust their outward appearances? These questions assume an added urgency in the underworld trial scene, which Lu only discusses in relation to issues of counterfeiting and slippage between material and nominal worth in the determination of monetary value (see Tina Lu, Persons, Roles and Minds: Identity in Peony Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan, [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001], pp. 106–13).

2 Du Liniang asserts that Liu Mengmei’s being beaten seventy strokes by Du Bao was actually his punishment for marrying her without parental assent. See Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖, Mudan ting 牡丹亭 (Peony pavilion), Xu Shuofang 徐朔方 and Yang Xiaomei 楊笑梅, ed. and annot. (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1982), hereafter MDT, pp. 55·266 and Cyril Birch, tr., The Peony Pavilion, Mudan ting, Second Edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), hereafter PP, p. 55·334 (citations to the play include the scene number).

3 Liniang passes all the tests set for her in Scene 55, and this convinces the emperor but not Du Bao, who only recognizes Liniang as his daughter when she faints (MDT, p. 55·227; PP, p. 55·336). She fails the tests that her mother sets for her in Scene 48, but that does not cause Madam Du to reject her daughter.

4 Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 (1574–1645) 37-scene adaption of the play, Fengliu meng 風流夢 (A romantic dream), is explicitly divided into two parts and his version of the scene ends the first half. See Catherine C. Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage: Four Centuries in the Career of a Chinese Drama (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2002), “Appendix B: Scene Summaries,” p. 269.

5 The original motivation for this detail must have been pretty strong since it comes at considerable cost to elements of the chronology (taking the three-year leap in time between her death and appearance in the underworld seriously would require that it takes that long for Liu Mengmei to reach the site of her burial) and logic (it would seem to make the injunction in Scene 23 for her corpse to be preserved come years too late to be of any use). Adaptations of the play (and of Scene 23) tend to just delete all reference to these three years. It so happens that in at least one understanding of how the Chinese Hell and its ten courts were supposed to work, after death the soul was to pass through each of the hells, a process that took time, and would arrive at the Tenth Hell, where it would be dispatched to be reborn, three years after death. See Stephen Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), pp. 215 and 223.

6 Although chuanqi is a southern dramatic form, chuanqi plays can include scenes modeled on northern drama that are structured around one complete northern style song-suite sung by one actor only. Scene 23 is the only scene to do this in Mudan ting, although Scene 55 alternates between northern and southern style arias, with the bulk of the former sung by Liniang. In both scenes, all of the tune titles for the northern style arias are prefixed by bei 北 (north).

7 John Y. H. Hu discusses the importance of the “Mingpan” scene within the overall structure of the play in his essay, “Through Hades to Humanity: A Structural Interpretation of The Peony Pavilion,” Tamkang Review 10·3 (Spring 1980): 591–608.

8 On the failure of the other “revenant” scenes in the play to make it into the zhezi xi repertoire, see Judith T. Zeitlin, The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), p. 138. On which scenes from the play were selected for inclusion in miscellanies or circulated individually in printed or manuscript form, with or without musical notation, see Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage, “Appendix C: Extracts from Mudan ting,” pp. 285–92. See also Yin Lili 尹麗麗, “Ming Qing xiqu sanchu xuanben zhong de Mudan ting” 明清戲曲散齣選本中的牡丹亭 (Peony Pavilion in Ming and Qing anthologies of separate drama scenes), Dongnan daxue xuebao 東南大學學報 (Journal of Southeast University) 2012·1: 102–104 (includes even information on which modern adaptations include the scene).

9 Although both men justified their adaptations as attempts to make performances of a “complete” version of the play more possible/likely, they were not successful from that point of view. They did, however (particularly in the case of Feng’s version) influence the stage performance of certain scenes from the play. On these two adaptations, see Part One of Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage.

10 A lovingly reproduced copy of a multi-colored manuscript (whose colors distinguish different parts of the text, such as the stage directions and dialogue) entitled “Mingpan shangren” 冥判上任 (The underworld judge takes up his post) is available in Isobe Akira 磯部彰, ed., Tōhoku Daigaku Fuzoku Toshokan zō “Nyozekan tō yonshu” genten to kenkyū 東北大学附属図書館蔵如是観等四種原典と研究 (The originals of and research on four [play scripts including] Let’s Look at it This Way held in the library of Tōhoku University; Sendai: Tokubetsu Suishin Kenkyū “Shinchō kyūtei engeki bunka no kenkyū” han, 2009), pp. 87–126. The running time for all four plays is given prominently at the beginning of the play scripts (that for “Mingpan shangren” being forty minutes [erke shifen 二刻十分], see p. 93). On what the archives reveal about performances of the play in the palace, see pp. 156–55 of Isobe’s introductory essay (printed at the back of the volume with pagination running in reverse order). Both the introductory essay and Isobe’s “Riben suocang neifu chaoben Rushi guan sizhong juben zhi yanjiu” 日本所藏內府鈔本如是觀四種劇本之研究 (Research on the palace manuscripts of four plays including “Let’s Look at it This Way” held in Japan), Wenxue yichan 文學遺產 (Literary heritage) 2012·4: 130–55, stress how the texts of these four plays were adapted to avoid the kind of language heavily prosecuted in the “literary inquisition” under the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735–1795). However, the fact that the court went to the trouble to produce such elegant multi-colored editions of play scripts with detailed stage directions does not necessarily mean that they were performed in the palace according to those texts. See the performance history for one of these multi-colored scripts, which happens to have been printed rather than copied out in calligraphy that looks like printed characters, as outlined in Hao Chengwen 郝成文, “Zhaodai xiaoshao yanjiu” 昭代簫韶研究 (Research on Music for an Enlightened Age; Ph.D. diss., Shanxi shifan daxue, 2012), pp. 91–104. The play in question is a 240-scene version of the story of the Yang family of generals.

11 Zang Maoxun in his Huanhun ji 還魂記 (Return of the soul; ca. 1618) cuts the judge’s longest aria from the opening of the scene, as well as most of his lascivious puns on the names of flowers enumerated in the latter part of the scene. Feng Menglong also revises the judge’s comments on the flowers (see Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage, “Appendix B: Scene Summaries,” p. 269). The entire flower enumeration sequence is cut from the text preserved in Zuiyi qing 醉怡情 (Drunken delighted emotions; ca. 1700); see Wang Qiugui 王秋桂, ed., Shanben xiqu congkan 善本戲曲叢刊 (Collection of rare editions of indigenous Chinese theater), Vols. 54–55 (Taibei: Taiwan Xuesheng shuju, 1984–1987), pp. 232–36.

12 This would be in keeping with C. T. Hsia’s complaint that the play’s more boisterous elements tend to be ignored, and that, “despite its comedy, Mu-tan t’ing [Mudan ting] has always been read as if the only scenes that matter are those tracing the heroine’s essential history.” See his “Time and the Human Condition in the Plays of T’ang Hsien-tsu,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., Self and Society in Ming Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 275–76. As even this quote makes clear, Hsia was speaking of the play as something to be read rather than to watch in performance.

13 In the multi-colored palace manuscript version of the play mentioned above, during the two long Hunjiang long and Houting hua arias, it is the clerk’s and the Flower Spirit’s “prompts” that are changed, with the former removed and the latter given to the judge himself to sing (see pp. 97–102 and 109–112 of the reproduction of the manuscript).

14 The original couplet, “Tiantai you lu, nan feng an, / diyu wuqing, que hen shui” 天台有路難逢俺, 地獄無情欲恨誰 (MDT 23·111), is translated by Birch as “I’m not a man you’ll meet on the paths of heaven / but don’t blame me if Hell’s a cruel place” (PP 23·128). The Zhuibai qiu version only changes one character (que 卻 [on the contrary] replaces yu 欲 [want]). See the modern reprint of the hebian version edited by Wang Xieru 王協如, Zhuibai qiu 綴白裘, Vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005), p. 75. These same changes appear in the manuscript of the scene from the Shengping shu 昇平署 (Bureau of Ascendant Peace; the organization in charge of palace theatrical performances beginning in 1827) reproduced in Gugong zhenben congkan 故宮珍本叢刊 (Collection of precious texts from the Forbidden Palace), Vol. 633 (Haikou: Hainan chubanshe, 2001), pp. 138–41 and the multi-colored palace version mentioned above (p. 106).

15 For instance, in Tang’s original version the clerk decides on his own that it is time to bring Liniang into the infernal courtroom, whereas performance versions tend to have the judge first order that she be brought in. They also tend to have her enter with her face obscured by a black gauze scarf worn on stage by ghosts (hunpa 魂帕); the judge only gets a chance to see her beauty after her face is revealed on his order.

16 For a sympathetic take on some of the changes to the “Mingpan” scene in zhezi xi, see Li Huimian 李辉綿, “Shenyin jian gulu Mudan ting zhezi xi de gaibian yu biaoyan” 審音鑑古錄牡丹亭折子戲的改變與表演 (Adaptations and performance of the Mudan ting zhezi xi in Shenyin jiangu lu), in Hua Wei 華瑋, ed., Tang Xianzu yu Mudan ting 湯顯祖與牡丹亭 (Tang Xianzu and Peony Pavilion; Taipei: Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu suo, 2005), pp 833–35.

17 See his 1908 colophon to the play, reproduced in Mao Xiaotong 毛效同, ed., Tang Xianzu yanjiu ziliao huibian 湯顯祖研究資料彙編 (Collection of research material on Tang Xianzu), 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986), hereafter ZLHB, 2: 966. Although most of Tang Xianzu’s official career was in Nanjing, he did serve as the district magistrate of Suichang, in which capacity he would have had to judge legal cases.

18 See an undated colophon that he wrote for all four of Tang Xianzu’s “dream” plays, reproduced in ZLHB, 2: 712.

19 The only full-length article on the “Mingpan” scene is Xu Yanlin 徐燕琳, “Mudan ting ‘Mingpan’ he panguan xi” 牡丹亭冥判和判官戲 (The “Underworld Judgment” scene in Peony Pavilion and plays featuring underworld judges) Minzu yishu 民族藝術 (Ethnic arts) 2005·1: 82–90. Xu looks at the relationship between the representation of Tang’s underworld judge and Zhong Kui and also attends to the possible influence of exorcist drama on the popularity of underworld judicial figures on the stage.

20 In 1958, Tan Zhengbi 譚正璧 proposed that the story “Du Liniang ji” 杜麗娘記 (The story of Du Liniang), listed in Chao Li’s 晁瑮 (1511–1575?) Baowen tang shumu 寶文堂書目 (Catalogue of the holdings of Baowen tang) must have been Tang Xianzu’s source text. Since then scholars looked for such a story and found a vernacular one, “Du Liniang muse huanhun,” which was preserved in a range of late-Ming miscellanies that postdate Mudan ting and was, they argued, the main inspiration for Tang’s play. See Wilt L. Idema. “‘What Eyes May Light upon My Sleeping Form?’: Tang Xianzu’s Transformation of His Sources, with a Translation of ‘Du Liniang Craves Sex and Returns to Life,’” Asia Major, 3rd series, 16 (2005): 111–45, pp. 118–19.

21 Whether Tang Xianzu was working from the classical or vernacular version of the story of Du Liniang has been a matter of debate. Xiang Zhizhu 向志柱 is the main proponent of the former position; see his “Mudan ting lanben wenti kaobian” 牡丹亭藍本問題考辨 (A critical study of the problem of the source text for Peony Pavilion), Wenyi yanjiu 文義研究 (Research on the literary arts) 2007·3: 72–78. See also his “Hu-shi cuibian yanjiu” 胡氏粹編研究 (Research on “Mr. Hu’s Miscellany” [this is the miscellany that the literary language tale was preserved in]), Ph.D. diss., Beijing shifan daxue, 2007), pp. 112–21. For criticism of his argument, see Huang Yishu 黄義樞 and Liu Shuiyun 劉水雲, “Cong xinjian cailiao “Du Liniang zhuan” kan Mudan ting de lanben wenti—Jian yu Xiang Zhizhu xiansheng shangque” 從新見材料 “杜麗娘傳” 看牡丹亭的藍本問題—兼與向志柱先生商榷 (Looking at the problem of the source text of Peony Pavilion from the perspective of the recently found material “The Story of Du Liniang”: With a discussion with Mr. Xiang Zhizhu), Ming Qing xiaoshuo yanjiu 明清小說研究 (Research on Ming and Qing fiction) 2004·4: 207–16, and Fu Dixiu 伏涤修, “Mudan ting lanben wenti bianyi—Jian yu Xiang Zhizhu xiansheng shangque” 牡丹亭藍本問題辨疑—兼與向志柱先生商榷 (Distinctions and doubts with regard to the question of the source text for Peony Pavilion: With a discussion with Mr. Xiang Zhiyu), Wenyi yanjiu 2010·9: 47–55. Regardless of which was Tang Xianzu’s source, the two versions differ only in terms of genre, not basic content.

22 All three of the literary language tales that Tang mentions specifically as sources in his preface were included in the early-Song classified collectanea Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Broad gleanings for the Taiping era), which was reprinted in Tang’s youth after centuries of relative neglect. In the 1961 Zhonghua shuju photo-reprint edition, the texts for the three stories can be found on pp. 319/2524 (“Li Zhongwen”), 316/2501–502 (“Scholar Tan”), and 276/2181–82 (“Feng Xiaojiang” 馮孝將). The chapters (juan 卷) of Taiping guangji are divided according to content. The first two of these stories come from the gui 鬼 (ghost) chapters, while the third comes from the meng 夢 (dream) chapters (although a more elaborate version of the same story from a different source appears in juan 375, one of the zaisheng 再生 [resurrection] chapters, under a title referencing the woman that Feng resurrects and marries: “Xu Xuanfang nü” 徐玄方女 [Xu Xuanfang’s daughter]). The sources from which the editors of Taiping guangji copied the stories are indicated at the end of each text.

23 Idema, “What Eyes May Light upon My Sleeping Form,” pp. 118–19, provides a translation of the story.

24 Idema, “What Eyes May Light upon My Sleeping Form,” pp. 124–25, provides a translation of the story.

25 Here I am following the conventional interpretation of the phrase “chuan Du Taishou shizhe” as referring to the plot of Mudan ting. It is worth noting, however, that the phrase and its larger context could also be read this way: “As for that which transmits [the story of] the affair of Prefect Du, it [meaning the literary language or vernacular story] is similar to the stories of the daughter of Li Zhongwen or the son of Feng Xiaojiang. I have somewhat changed and elaborated it [the literary language or vernacular source]. As for Prefect Du arresting and beating young Liu [something that appears in neither the literary language or vernacular source], that is like the Prince of Suiyang arresting and beating Mr. Tan.” 傳杜太守事者, 仿佛晉武都守李仲文、廣州守馮孝將兒女事. 予稍為更而演之. 至於杜守收拷柳生, 亦如漢睢陽王收拷談生也. MDT, p. 1. Regardless of whether this reading is correct or not, the importance of the earlier tales to the adapatation of Du Bao’s “case” is still apparent.

26 The third source Tang mentions, “Feng Xiaojiang,” is very different from the other two in that the father of the resurrected girl plays no part at all in the shorter version and, although his name appears in the title of the longer version, is not allowed to even evince surprise, much less doubt, at his daughter’s resurrection.

27 MDT, p. 1.

28 Tang Xianzu was rather unconventional in separating qing 情 and li 理 from each other. As David Rolston has noted, most fiction and drama critics used the terms together as a compound, qingli 情理. See David L. Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing between the Lines (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 174–75.

29 See Xu Shuofang 徐朔方, “Lun Mudan ting” 論牡丹亭 (On Peony Pavilion), Lun Tang Xianzu ji qita 論湯顯祖及其他 (On Tang Xianzu and other things; Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1983), pp. 44–45. The phrase in quotes comes from something that Judge Hu says after he hears Liniang’s story, MDT, p. 23·112; PP, p. 129.

30 See Hou Wailu 候外盧, “Tang Xianzu Mudan ting Huanhun ji waizhuan” 湯顯祖牡丹亭還魂記外傳 (An external commentary on Tang Xianzu’s Peony Pavilion Return of the Soul), Renmin ribao 人民日報 (People’s daily), May 3, 1961, reproduced in ZLHB, 2: 1069.

31 As in the case of the doctor whose botched diagnosis causes You Erjie 尤二姐 to abort her foetus in chapter 69 of Honglou meng 紅樓夢 (The dream of red chambers).

32 Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 363, points out that the title itself literally implies “a decision-making official, from antiquity inheriting the connotation of judging.” From the summary he provides, it is clear that throughout the history of this official title those who bore it were always second- or third-level officials, and that during the Ming dynasty, when Mudan ting was written, it was “used almost exclusively as Assistant Prefect [below the Prefect and Vice-Prefect]… .”

33 Jiao Xun 焦循 (1763–1820), in his Ju shuo 劇說 (Talks on drama), recorded this theory as coming from his friend Tan Xingfu 談星符. For the passage involved and Fu Xuming’s comments on it, see Xu Fuming 徐扶明, Mudan ting yanjiu ziliao kaoshi 牡丹亭研究資料考釋 (Investigations and explanations of research material on Peony Pavilion; Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986), p. 178.

34 Wu Wushan sanfu heping Mudan ting 吳吳山三婦合評牡丹亭 (Combined commentary to the Peony Pavilion by the three wives of Wu Wushan; Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2008), p. 23·55. The other two wives were named Tan Ze 談則 and Qian Yi 錢宜. On why the commentary was infamous, see Judith Zeitlin. “Shared Dreams: The Story of the Three Wives’ Commentary on The Peony Pavilion,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 54·1 (1994): 127–79. Lisa See, Peony in Love (New York: Random House, 2007), is a fictional attempt to imagine how the combined commentary was written.

35 The print is reproduced in Zeitlin, The Phantom Heroine, pp. 166–67, as Figure 20.

36 For a recent account in English of Judge Bao’s early career in vernacular literature, see Wilt L. Idema, Judge Bao and the Rule of Law: Eight Ballad-Stories from the Period 1250–1450 (Singapore: World Scientific, 2010), “Introduction,” pp. ix–xxxiv.

37 MDT 23·110; translation modified from PP 23·125.

38 MDT 23·109; PP 23·123.

39 PP 23·125; MDT 23·110.

40 See Idema, “Introduction,” Judge Bao and the Rule of Law, p. xiii.

41 PP 23·122; MDT 23·109. There is a farce “Da Chenghuang” 打城隍 that is not included in any of the collections of Peking opera scripts readily available but translated in L. C. Arlington and Harold Acton, Famous Chinese Plays (Peiping: H. Vetch, 1937), pp. 345–52. In it three fellows go into the city god temple and impersonate the statues of the city god, a panguan, and a demon to avoid being dragged off to help build the Great Wall. Their impersonation succeeds but they nonetheless fail to escape abuse from the officials searching for them.

42 Zhong Kui is a fictional character. Some think he got his name because it puns with an herb believed to ward off ghosts. The most popular story about him describes him as living during the Tang dynasty and placing first in the civil service exams, but being stripped of his title because he was too ugly (having been made that way by demons he encountered on his way to the capital). He commits suicide and becomes a deity charged with catching trouble-making ghosts/demons. Unlike other panguan, Zhong Kui and the ghosts he arrests and tries are shown to be at large in the human world rather than confined to the netherworld. On his representation in popular literature, see Xu Zeliang 徐澤亮, “Lun Zhong Kui gushi ji xingxiang zai tongsu wenxue zhong de yanbian” 論鐘馗故事及形象在通俗文學中的演變 (On changes in the story and image of Zhong Kui in popular literature), Shenzhen daxue xuebao 深圳大學學報 (Journal of Shenzhen University) 2010·6: 111–16.

43 Xu Fuming, Mudan ting yanjiu ziliao kaoshi, p. 180. On the history of this type of dance, see Li Nan 李楠, “‘Tiao Zhong Kui’ yuanliu yanjiu” 跳鐘馗源流研究 (On the origins and dissemination of “Dancing Zhong Kui”), MA thesis, Zhongguo yishu xueyuan, Beijing, 2004. On developments in the image of Zhong Kui over time, see Wu Mingyan 吳明艷, “Lidai Zhong Kui renwu xingxiang de jiexi” 歷代鐘馗人物形象的解析 (A diachronic analysis of the image of Zhong Kui), MA thesis, Suzhou University, 2010.

44 Sometimes the “kui” in Zhong Kui’s name is written with this other “kui.”

45 PP 23·121 (modified); MDT 23·109. The Star of Literature is depicted with a brush in one hand and a container (dou 斗) full of ink in the other. This is the same dou as in Doukui 斗魁, a compound referring to the four stars that make up the bowl of the Big Dipper.

46 The comments that the clerk makes about Judge Hu’s hat (“a little antiquated” [guqi xie 古氣些]) and brush (“dried out” [ganliao 干了]), coming right after the judge claims that the “three-foot” (sanchi 三尺) “clay” (tu 土) statues of panguan in temples are of him, seem both disrespectful and suggestive that the judge indeed is nothing but a statue.

47 Chen Tong claims that the reason for the long aria on the brush is because “the judge’s name comes from the brush” (pan yi bi de ming 判以筆得名). She is probably referring to the fact that the clerk has just said that upon taking office, judges need to use the brush to “judge” (pan 判) cases. See Wu Wushan sanfu heping Mudan ting, p. 53. The association of the brush with a judge’s power is very natural. For instance, a sentence of execution was finalized with a check made by the emperor’s brush confirmed in like manner just prior to the execution by the presiding official. This power was dramatized on the stage in, for instance, “Yexun” 夜訊 (Night interrogation), Scene 15 in Zhu Suchen’s 朱素臣 (ca. 1621–ca. 1701) Shiwu guan 十五貫 (Fifteen strings of cash). Kuang Zhong 況鐘 raises his brush to ratify the execution that he has been delegated to oversee but then decides that the condemned are innocent and sets aside his brush.

48 On this piece, see William H. Nienhauser, Jr., “An Allegorical Reading of Han Yu’s “Mao-Ying Chuan” (Biography of Fur Point),” Oriens Extremus 23·2 (December 1976): 153–74.

49 The anecdote appears in the biography of Fu Jian in the Jinshu 晉書 (History of the Jin dynasty), chapter 123.

50 Wang Siren 王思任 (1575–1646) compares the first image in the aria, in which the stand upon which the brush rests (bijia 筆架) is spoken of as “a lotus flower of human flesh” (rou lianhua 肉蓮花), to “a painting brushed with broad ‘axe-cut’ strokes” (yong shuimo dafu picun 用水墨大斧劈皴). See Wang Siren piping ben Mudan ting 王思任批評本牡丹亭 (Wang Siren commentary edition of the Peony Pavilion; Nanjing: Fenghuang chuban she, 2011), p. 23·76.

51 Li Mengming 李孟明, Lianpu liubian tushuo 臉譜流變圖說 (Illustrated explanations of facial patterns and their historical changes; Tianjin: Nankai daxue, 2009), p. 174, provides four different face patterns for Judge Hu, all quite dissimilar from each other.

52 The traditional explanation for why the stage entrance was called “the gate of the ghosts” is because most of the characters enacted on the stage were long dead.

53 See Yuming He, Home and the World: Editing the ‘Glorious Ming’ in Woodblock-Printed Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), p. 132, for He Liangjun’s 何良俊 (1506–1573) claim that Lin Xiaoquan 林小泉 (ca. 1472–1541) did just this.

54 See Yuming He, “Difficulties of Performance: The Musical Career of Xu Wei’s The Mad Drummer,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 68·2 (December 2008): 77–114. On theater and private space in the late Ming in general, see her “Productive Space: Performance Texts in the Late Ming,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2003.

55 A complete translation of the play was published recently in Shiamin Kwa, Strange Eventful Histories: Identity, Performance, and Xu Wei’s Four Cries of the Gibbon (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012), pp. 117–38.

56 He, “Difficulties of Performance,” p. 79.

57 The greatest demand for uniformity in the kinds of arias used is at the beginning and the end of such song-suites. The first six arias and the final one are the same in the two plays. These seven arias comprise the majority of the arias that appear in the two song-suites. For a chart showing the most common structures for song-suites in this particular musical mode (Xianlü 仙律), see Dale R. Johnson, Yuarn Music Dramas: Studies in Prosody and Structure and a Complete Catalogue of Northern Arias in the Dramatic Style (Ann Arbor: The Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1980), p. 15.

58 See He, “The Difficulties of Performance,” pp. 89–102, for what Xu did with this aria, also for the “Wubei ci” 烏悲詞 (Wubei Songs) that he created and inserted at this point, which He likens to “a play within a play within a play” (p. 98).

59 The preface is reproduced in Wang Siren piping ben Mudan ting and the relevant portion is translated in He, “The Difficulties of Performance,” p. 103. She notes that Xu Shuofang has convincingly argued that Xu could not actually have read Tang’s play and that instead the anecdote is an example of “what might have seemed natural to a contemporary audience of drama connoisseurs” (p. 104).

60 People who have ended up in the City of the Wrongfully Dead typically died unjustly or before their time. They have done nothing wrong, but Judge Hu automatically assumes that their guilt has brought them before him. If there is indeed any deeper point being made, it might concern the general impression that judges in the human world seem to automatically assume the guilt of those brought before them for trial.

61 MDT 23·110; PP 23·126. The four of them are, according to the stage directions, to be played, respectively, by the sheng 生 (male lead), mo 末 (extra male), wai 外 (secondary male), and laodan 老旦 (older woman) actors of the troupe, but since all four are bit parts they have clearly just been assigned to members of the troupe who did not have other roles to play in the scene (there is nothing, for instance, about Monkey Li that is reminiscent of a typical older woman character).

62 In the Zhuibai qiu version, Monkey Li presents his engaging in male–male sex as a kind of charity work for those without access to women, and twice (once before the judge’s sentence and once after) he intimates that perhaps the judge might be interested in his services. See the Zhuibai qiu version, pp. 73–74. In the multi-color palace manuscript, p. 103, Judge Hu accuses Monkey Li of stealing business from female prostitutes (qiang changji shengya 搶娼妓生涯).

63 The stage direction reads zuo xie bu jie 做寫簿介 (does the business of writing in the register), MDT 23·111; PP 23·126.

64 MDT 23·111; PP 23·127. Birch translates “Since I am in a temporary position… .”

65 Luan 卵 can be used to refer to both eggs and testicles.

66 Only two of the four—Zhao the Eldest and Qian Fifteen—are born as birds. Sun Xin ends up as a butterfly and Monkey Li as a bee.

67 MDT 23·111.

68 PP 23·127; MDT 23·111.

69 PP 10·42; MDT 10·42.

70 The illustration of the scene from the Wenlin ge edition has Judge Hu blowing the “four friends” already in their transformed state (swallow, oriole, bee, butterfly).

71 There are two further mentions of them in the scene itself. The first, in which Judge Hu tells the Flower Spirit that the “four flower friends” (huajian si you 花間四友) are in his care (fu ni shouguan 付你收管), comes right before the judge decides that Liniang should also be reborn as a bird (MDT 23·114). The second comes in Judge Hu’s last aria, in which he tells Liniang that they are at her command and will help her seek out her lover and consummate her love (MDT 23·115). That is the last that we hear of them. Modern adaptations of the scene, including that in the very influential “Young Lover’s Version” (Qingchun ban 青春版), cut all mention of Zhao, Qian, Sun, and Li.

72 The explanation for why this particular court of Hell has been closed—that too many people had died in the strife between the Song and Jin forces (MDT 23·108)—also seems contingent. As discussed above, this three-year time gap brings with it a number of problems that Tang seems to have purposely ignored.

73 Which she just refers to as “this emotion-harming event” (ci shanggan zhi shi 此傷感之事; MDT 23·114).

74 Birch translates as “Register of Marriages” (PP 23·133). English does talk about something being “gut-wrenching” (rather than “gut slicing”). In Chinese popular literature infernal judges are typically shown looking into shengsi bu 生死簿 (registers of life and death) when deciding cases brought them but not registers restricted to marriage affinities. The “old man under the moon” who is supposed to tie couples together with a red thread is said to consult a register of that kind, but the more common names for it are yuanyang pu 鴛鴦譜 (register of mandarin ducks) or yinyuan pu 姻緣譜 (register of marriage affinities).

75 Notorious because each scene begins by listing instance after instance of language that the commentators claim should be read as metaphors (yu 喻) for the male and female genital organs.

76 See Hua Wei 華瑋 and Jiang Jurong 江巨榮, eds., Caizi Mudan ting 才子牡丹亭 (Genius Peony Pavilion; Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 2004), p. 23·345.

77 Shupan 書判 (written verdict) as opposed to yupan 語判 (oral verdict). See Hu Pingren 胡平仁, “Zhongguo gudai panci yishu de xingtaixue fenxi” 中國古代判詞藝術的形態學分析 (A morphological analysis of the art of the genre of judicial verdicts in ancient China), Xiangtan daxue xuebao 湘潭大學學報 (Journal of Xiangtan University) 2013·1: 92–95, p. 92.

78 In “made-up” cases, the parties were referred to by the ordinal series known as the “Heavenly branches” (tiangan 天干), the first two of which are jia 甲 and yi 乙. Their use in this genre is equivalent to talking of party “A” vs. party “B.” For an explanation of how that worked, see Wu Chengxue 吳承學, “Tangdai panwen wenti ji yuanliu yanjiu” 唐代判文文體及源流研究 (Research into the genres of Tang dynasty judicial verdicts and their origins and development), Wenxue yichan 文學遺產 (Literary heritage) 1999·6: 29–33, p. 25.

79 The language that Hong Mai uses makes it appear that he is not referring to one collection by Zheng Tian but to his customary writing as an official, but there was actually a text by him that had several titles, one of which—Zhiyu tangpang ji 敕語堂判集 (Collection of edicts and judgments)—differs from Hong’s text only by the addition of the final character (ji 集 [collection]). See Tan Shujuan 谭淑娟, “Tangdai panwen erzhong kao” 唐代判文二种考 (An investigation into two kinds of Tang dynasty written verdicts), Guiyang xueyuan xuebao 貴陽學院學報 (Journal of Guiyang College) 2009·4: 65–69, pp. 66–67. Tan puts this text together with others that are collections of writings primarily connected to the examinations rather than real judicial or administrative cases.

80 Hong Mai 洪邁, Rongzhai suibi 容齋隨筆 (Random notes from Follow my Brush Cottage; Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1996), juan 10, p. 127.

81 The adjective that we have seen Chen Tong apply to the judge, fengliu 風流, translated above as “whimsical,” is commonly translated as “romantic.” Playboys were referred to as huahua gongzi 花花公子.

82 Wu Xinlei 吳新雷, ed., Kunju da cidian 崑劇大辭典 (Grand dictionary of Kun opera; Nanjing: Nanjing daxue, 2002), p. 88, lists “Huapan” as an alternate name for the scene as a zhezi xi.

83 As in Cyril Birch’s translation.

84 As is the case in the multi-color palace script and other scripts that add “shangren” (takes up his post) to the title.

85 Ni 擬 was also used to described provisional verdicts made by subordinate officials that had to be ratified by their superiors. As we have already seen, Judge Hu continually stresses the provisional nature of his authority, but in “Mingpan” he does not use ni as an adverb to describe his verdicts. According to Miao Huaiming 苗懷明, “Zhongguo gudai panci de wenxuehua jincheng ji qi wenxue pinge” 中國古代判詞的文學化進程及其文學品格 (The progress toward literariness of judicial verdicts in ancient China and their literary evaluation), Jianghai xuekan 江海學刊 (Jianghai scholarly journal) 2000·5: 156–60, pp. 157–58, the majority of judicial verdicts that have come down to us from the Tang are nipan produced either as practice before taking the exam, as models (fanben 範本) for candidates, or as literary “games” (youxi 游戲). Real examples of judicial verdicts transmitted from the Tang are rare and they are indeed written in parallel prose (the famous “Ancient Prose Movement” [guwen yundong 古文運動] did not have much effect at all on this kind of bureaucratic writing in the Tang), but lack the whimsy and flourishes associated with huapan or of another contemporary genre in which two different cases were written of at the same time (shuangguan pan 雙關判). As is probably already pretty evident from the passage by Hong Mai, huapan was a genre that was pretty “fuzzy” around the edges. Wu Chengxue, “Tangdai panwen wenti ji yuanliu yanjiu,” pp. 24–25, reproduces the list of twenty texts in the “Anpan” 案判 category (this term is later usually used to refer to actual judicial verdicts, but here actually includes collections of made-up cases such as Zhang Zhuo’s and Bai Juyi’s) in Zheng Qiao’s 鄭橋 (1104–1162) Tongzhi 通志 (Comprehensive treatise on institutions; 1149) and the categories used in the chapters on judicial verdicts in Wenyuan yinghua 文苑英華 (Finest flowers of the preserve of letters; completed 987, revised 1007 and 1009). None of the titles in the former include the words huapan, which is also not included among the three generic divisions (pan 判, zapan 雜判 [miscellaneous verdicts], and shuangguan 雙關) used in the latter. Minggong shupan Qing Ming ji 名公書判清明集 (Enlightened judgments: Written verdicts by famous men; preface 1261), does contain two examples of judicial judgments labeled as huapan in their titles. Both are by Ye Yanfeng 葉岩峰 and on problems with rental buildings, and appear in the same section of the work (see the Beijing Zhonghua shuju edition, 1987, juan 6, pp. 196–97; the second one both gives full names for the parties and refers to them as “family A” [jiajia 甲家] and “family B” [yijia 乙家]). Neither is very remarkable. One of them, “Zhan linfang huapan” 佔賃房花判 (Flowery verdict on a case of arbitrary occupation of a rental building), is included in a translation that concentrates on the content rather than the style in Brian E. McKnight and James T.C. Liu, trs., The Enlightened Judgments: Ch’ing-ming Chi: The Sung Dynasty Collection (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 208–10. McKnight and Liu describe the genre of huapan (which they call ‘flowery judgments”) as “a decision in a special elaborate style employing parallel sentences, essentially for the appreciation of other scholar-officials” (p. 208).

86 There is debate over when the book was compiled, with most people thinking that it was basically compiled in the Song but printed (and perhaps supplemented) in the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Only one copy was preserved, in Japan. Some of the quotations from the work included in the Yongle dadian 永樂大典 (Great compendium of documents from the Yongle reign; 1408) cannot be found in the single extant copy. On this work and its overlap with contemporary collections, see Ling Yuzhi 凌鬱之, “Luo Ye Xinbian Zuiweng tanlu kaolun 羅燁新編醉翁談錄考論 (On Luo Ye’s Newly compiled Talks of an Old Drunkard), Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu 中國文學研究 (Research on Chinese literature) 2007·3: 213–31.

87 See Y. W. Ma, “Kung-an Fiction: A Historical and Critical Introduction,” T’oung Pao 65·4–5 (1979): 200–59. Ma sees the inclusion of legal “documents” as one of the “early identifying features of kung-an [gong’an] fiction” (p. 205) and the quotation of “legal” documents in gong’an fiction is one of the things that he tracks in his essay. The late Ming saw a sudden boom in the publication of collections of gong’an stories, many of which also featured elaborate legal documents (see ibid., pp. 214–21, on these collections, and p. 219 on their quotation of legal documents).

88 Ma, “Kung-an Fiction,” p. 219, stresses that the quotation of legal documents in huaben stories is not a major feature of the genre. There are, however, examples of huaben stories with huapan. An example is story 8 in Feng Menglong’s Xingshi hengyan 醒世恆言 (Stories old and new; 1627), “Qiao taishou luandian yuanyang pu” 喬太守亂點鴛鴦譜 (Prefect Qiao scrambles the register of marriages), a rather comic story in which Prefect Qiao summarizes the case and his decision to play matchmaker in parallel prose.

89 Pu Songling 蒲松齡 (1640–1716) included elaborate verdicts in four of the stories in his Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異 (Stories from Liaozhai). His collected works contain 70 nipan, 66 of which were written as practice for taking the civil service examinations. See Duan Zhange 段戰戈, “Tang Song bingzhong, qingli fa jiangu—Lun Pu Songling de nipanci chuangzuo” 唐宋并重, 情理法兼顧—論蒲松齡的擬判詞創作 (Balancing the Tang and the Song, paying attention to both logic and the law—On Pu Songling’s creation of made-up judicial verdicts), Pu Songling yanjiu 蒲松齡研究 (Research on Pu Songling) 2013·1: 81–92, p. 84.

90 Lu Beirong 陸蓓容, Geng yu heren shuo 更與何人說 (Who else can I tell?; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011), in the chapter on “Mingpan” (Lu uses the alternate title “Huapan”), pp. 82–83, goes to the trouble of reproducing the entire text of Houting hua gun, but provides no annotation, saying instead, “To fail to understand the allusions in the text is actually not important. As long as we understand that the whole text from beginning to end is actually an allegory, that it uses the various kinds of flowers to describe the whole course of a woman’s life from betrothal to marriage, from giving birth to sons to growing old and dying, then that is enough” 看不明白詞裡的典故原不要緊. 只要我們懂得這詞兒原是通篇借喻, 用各種花兒形容着女子從定情到成親,從生子到老死的全部過程, 就是了 (p. 83). She argues that this shows that Judge Hu knows how to cherish women without feeling the need to embrace them (pp. 82–83), but it would have been nice had she developed her reading of the Houting hua gun sequence in detail. Incidentally, she mentions that Wu Shuang 吳雙, the Shanghai Kunju yuan 上海崑劇院 (Shanghai Kunju Company) actor who plays Judge Hu, has been performing a version of the scene that is fuller than the others being performed (pp. 81–82), and indeed, a version featuring Wu Shuang available on the internet (http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/ZHTYsz0UeMw/, accessed July 20, 2013) shows this to be the case.

91 MDT 23·113.

92 This play, Xie Jinlian shijiu hong lihua 謝金蓮詩酒紅梨花 (Xie Jinlian’s gift of a bouquet of pink flowering-pear flowers honored by a poem [reappears] at a banquet; short title: Hong lihua), is extant in a number of Ming editions. In it a Top Candidate scholar is temporarily tricked into believing his love is a ghost and is at first only even more convinced when Xie shows up again with the flowers on her fan.

93 The exceptions seem to be the multi-colored palace script and Wu Shuang’s version, and even they make major changes.

94 As in Shanghai Kunju yuan versions of the scene before Wu Shuang’s new one.