head, singing her speech, with a charming voice, and agreeable motion of the body, playing with her hands, in one of which she held a fan. The prologue thus -performed, the play followed, the story of which turned upon a Chinese emperor, long since dead, who had behaved himself well towards his country, and in honour of whose memory the play was written. Sometimes he appeared in royal robes, with a flat ivory sceptre in his hand, and sometimes his officers shewed themselves with ensigns, arms, and drums, &c. and by intervals a sort of farce was acted by their lacqueys, whose antick dress and painted faces were as well as any I have seen in Europe; and, as far as was interpreted to me, their farce was very diverting, especially part of it which represented a person who had in his marringe been cheated by a debauched wife, and fancying her constant to him, had the mortification to see another make love to her before his face."* Mr. Bell, who accompanied the Russian ambassador to Pekin in 1719, describes the court amusements to consist of wrestling, sham-fights, tumbling, posturemaking, and fire-works. At an entertainment given to the gentlemen of the embassy, by one of the emperor's sons, the amusements where somewhat better. Speaking of the comedians, he says, "There entered on the stage seven warriors, all in armour, with different weapons in their hands, and terrible vizards on their faces. After they had taken a few turns about the stage, and survey • Harris's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 989. ed each other's armour, they at last fell a quarrelling; and, in the encounter, one of the heroes was slain. Then an angel descended from the clouds, in a flash of lightning, with a monstrous sword in his hand, and soon parted the combatants, by driving them ali of the stage; which done, he ascended in the same manner he came down, in a cloud of fire and smoke. This scene was succeeded by several comical farces, which, to me, seemed very diverting, though in a language I did not understand *** But the comedy performed at a tavern in Pekin, "by a company of players maintained by the house," at an entertainment given to them by "a young Chinese gentleman," afforded to all great pleasure; " and the performers consisted of both men and women, well-dressed, and of decent behaviour." Lord Macartney, in his own journal, describes the wrestling, tumbling, wire-dancing, conjuring, and fire-works, that were exhibited at his introduction to the late Emperor Kien-lung, and seems to speak of them with great contempt, except the ingenuity with which the Chinese had displayed their art in clothing fire with all manner of colours and shapes. Their "wretched dramas," as he calls them, are thus described. "The theatrical entertainments consisted of great variety, both tragical and comical, several distinct pieces were acted in succession, though without any apparent connexion with one another. Some of them were hisBett's Travels from St. Petersburgh, page 288. ilbud. p. 310. torical, highest applause, and two or three of the great men at my elbow desired me to take particular notice of it; repeating, at the same time, 'hao! hung, hav!'-charming, delightful!* Lorical, and others of pure fancy, partly in recitativo, partly in sing ing, and partly in plain speaking, without any accompaniment of austrumental music, but abounding in battles, murders, and most of the usual incidents of the drama. Mr. Barrow, in describing the Last of all, was the grand panto- amusements given to the Dutch mauve, which, from the approba- ambassadors in 1795, from the tron it met with, is, I presume, journal of a gentleman in their considered a first-rate effort of suite, speaks of posture-making, intention and ingonuity. It seem rope-dancing, "and a sort of paued to me, as far as I could com- tomimic performance, the principrehend it, to represent the mar-pal characters of which were men rage of the Ocean and the Earth. The latter exhibited her various riches and productions, dragons and elephants and tigers and eagles and ostriches, oaks and praes, and other trees of different Lads. The ocean was not behind band, but poured forth on the stage the wealth of his dominions, under the figures of whales and dolphins, porpoises and leviathans, and other sea-monsters, besides ups, rocks, shells, sponges, and corals, all performed by concealed actors, who were quite perfect in their parts, and performed their characters to admiration. These two marine and land regiments, after separately parading in a circular procession for a considerable ticue, at last joined together, and formung one body, came to the frout of the stage, when, after a few evolutions, they opened to the right and left, to give room for the whale, who seemed to be the counmanding officer, to waduke forward; and who, taking his station exactly opposite to the emperor's box, spouted out of his mouth into the pit several tuos of water, which quickly disappeared through the perforations of the flour. This ejaculation was reecived with the dressed in skins, and going on all fours, intended to represent wild beasts; and a parcel of boys, habited in the dresses of mandarins, who were to hunt them."† And again, after the whole court had been terribly frightened by an eclipse of the moon, an entertainment was given to the ambassadors, during which "a pantomime, intended to be an exhibition of the battle of the dragon and the moon, was represented before the full court. In this engagement, two or three hundred priests, bearing lanterns suspended at the ends of long sticks, performed a variety of evolutions, dancing and capering about, sometimes over the plain, and then over chairs and tables, affording to his imperial majesty, and to his courtiers, the greatest pleasure and satisfaction." De Guignes also, w bo accompanied these ambassadors, describes this scene as a very puerile and ludicrous representation. "A number of Chinese, he says, "placed at the distance of six feet from ope another, now entered, bearing two • Life of the Earl of Macartney, vol. ii. ↑ Barrow's Travels in China, p. 216. long long dragons of silk or paper, painted blue, with white scales, and stuffed with lighted lamps. These two dragons, after saluting the emperor with due respect, moved up and down with great composure; when the moon suddenly made her appearance, upon which they began to run after her. The moon, however, fearlessly placed herself between them, and the two dragons, after surveying her for some time, and concluding apparently, that she was too large a morsel for them to swallow, judged it prudent to retire; which they did with the same ceremony as they entered. The moon, elated with her triumph, then withdrew with prodigious gravity: a little flushed, however, with the chase which she had sustained." It would seem, however, that meanness are vulgarity are not the most objectionable charges to which the exhibitions of the Chinese stage are obnoxious; some of them being grossly indecent and obscene. An instance is mentioned by Mr. Barrow, of a woman being condemned to be flayed alive, for the murder of her husband; she appears on the stage not only naked, but completely excoriated: and he adds, that the European gentlemen at Canton, are sometimes so disgusted with the filthy and obscene exhibitions, as to leave the theatre.↑ "The history of husbands deceived by their mistresses," says Mons. de Guignes, "being frequently the subject of their comedies, there occur therein sometimes situations so free, and in which the actor ex • Vorage à Pekin, vol. i. p. 421. hibits so much truth, that the scene As scenes like these are stated • Voyage à Pekin, vol. ii. p. 324. and and New Testament," Adam and Eve were both exhibited on the stage naked, and appeared in the subsequent scene with their figleaves; and Malone says, this kind of primitive exhibition was revived in the time of James the First; "several persons appearing almost entirely naked, in a pastoral exhibited at Oxford before the king and queen, and the ladies who attended her." Mr. Barrow has conjectured, that the low and trifling amusements of the court, may have been introduced by the Tartars, as more congenial to their rude and unpolished manners, while the songs and recitative of the regular drama are more suited to the genius and spirit of the ceremonious Chinese. The two Mahomedans who visited China are silent on the subject; and Marco Polo only observes, that at the emperor's feasts were buffoons, and players on musical instruments, and posture-masters. At that time, however, a Tartar dynasty also occupied the throne. As far as the mere spectacle is concerned, the several travellers we have mentioned could not well be mistaken. Some deduction, however, ought probably to be made, on account of their ignorance of the language. The absurdities that strike the eye they are capable of describing, but the dialogue of the regular drama, being utterly unintelligible, ceases to create any interest. What their merits and defects may therefore be, Europeans have hitherto possessed very slender means of forming a sound judgment. A garbled translation of a single drama by Pere Premare, a jesuit, is the solitary specimen of this kind of VOL. LIX. composition in any European language, before that which is now offered to the public. It is called the Orphan of Chao, and forms one of a collection of one hundred plays, written under the dynasty of Yuen,* in the fourteenth century. Voltaire, who adapted the subject to the French stage, considers it as a valuable monument of Chinese literature at that early period, barbarous as it is when compared with the dramatic art in Europe, but far superior to any thing that Europe could boast at the time it was written. He considers it at least equal to the English and Spanish tragedies of the seventeenth century; and observes that, "like the monstrous farces of Shakespeare, and of Lopez de Vega, which have been called tragedies, the action of the Chinese piece continues five and twenty years."-"Montrous," however, as they may be, few Englishmen would give up the worst" farce" of Shakespeare, for the heavy monotony and blustering declamation of the best "tragedy" of Voltaire. He admits that "the Orphan of Chao," notwithstanding the improbability of the occurrences, has something in it which interests us; and that, in spite of the innumerable crowd of events, they are all exhibited in the most clear and distinct manner-but these he considers as its only beauties; unity of time and action, sentiment, character, eloquence, passion, all, he says, are wanting. Some of them, it is true, are wanting in Premare's translation, because he has omitted most of the poetry, or those parts which have been compared with the Greek chorus, and in which sentiment, eloquence, passion, are all expressed; that is to say, he has left out the very best parts of the play. Our countryman, Dr. Hurd, in his "Discourse on Poetical Imitation," formed a very different opinion of this tragedy from that of Voltaire. He conceived that it embraces the two essentials of dramatic poetry, unity and integrity of action-and a close connexion of the incidents of the story; for, first, he observes "the action is strictly one; the destruction of the House of Chao is the single event on which our attention turns from the beginning; we see it gradually prepared and brought on; and with its completion the tragedy finishes. Secondly, the action proceeds with as much rapidity as Aristotle himself demands and having noticed its resemblance in many points to the Electra of Sophocles" let me add," says he, "an intermixture of songs in passionate parts, heightened into sublime poetry, and somewhat resembling the character of the ancient chorus." Had Premare translated more of these lyrics, he would probably have found the resemblance still more complete. The comedy of an Heir in his Old Age," is the simple representation of a story in domestic lifea plain, “unvarnished tale," in which Chinese manners and Chinese feelings are faithfully delineated and expressed, in a natural manner, and in appropriate language. Two things, however, must be borne in mind by the European reader, to enable him to enter fully into the spirit of this play-first, that filial piety is, among the Chinese, the first of virtues, and the lack of it, one of the worst of crimes; that it is the grand basis on which all the religious, moral, and civil institutions of the empire are founded; that the greatest misfortune in life is the want of a son to honour and console his aged parents, and to visit annually their tombs when dead-and, secondly, that to afford every means of procuring a son, a man may take inferior wives or concubines, who are generally purchased from poor relations; such wives having no rights of their own, and their children being considered as the children of the first or legitimate wife, who call her by the name of mother, and are entitled to the same rights and privileges as her own children. The dramatis persona of this play are made up entirely of the members of a family in the middling class of society, consisting of an old man, his wife, his second or inferior wife, his nephew, his son-in-law, and his daughter. The old man, having amassed considerable wealth by trade, and having no son to console him in his old age, and to perform the obsequies at his tomb, had taken a second wife, whose pregnancy is announced in the opening of the play. In order to propitiate heaven to favour him with a son in his old age, he makes a sacrifice of all the small debts due to him, by burning the documents, which at the same time serves to quiet some scruples of conscience as to the mode in which part of his money had been acquired. He then divides his property between |
