Ming drama represents the classical Chinese theatre at its most mature. Between 1368 and 1644, more than 400 playwrights produced over 1500 plays, ranging from one-act skits to works with 50 scenes or more. As a performing art, Ming theatre includes polished singing, enchanting music, fantastic plotting, and intricate choreography.

Mistress & Maid, one of the greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, is here available for the first time in English. Acclaimed translator Cyril Birch presents the bittersweet tale of Bella, daughter of the Wang family, her maid Petal, and the young scholar Shen Chun. After her father reneges on her marital pact, Bella refuses to renounce her love for Shen, with whom she has vowed to share "in life one room, in death one tomb." The subversion of both conventional morality and the arranged marriage through vivid drama and witty comic scenes makes this seventeenth-century play particularly...

Mistress & Maid, one of the greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, is here available for the first time in English. Acclaimed translator Cyril Birch presents the bittersweet tale of Bella, daughter of the Wang family, her maid Petal, and the young scholar Shen Chun. After her father reneges on her marital pact, Bella refuses to renounce her love for Shen, with whom she has vowed to share "in life one room, in death one tomb." The subversion of both conventional morality and the arranged marriage through vivid drama and witty comic scenes makes this seventeenth-century play particularly...

The popularity of the Chinese storyteller goes back to the marketplace of the T'ang dynasty, but the familiar figure came into its own in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This selection of stories from Feng Menglong's collection, Stories Old and New (originally published in 1624), includes representative types of the storyteller's traditional art. The Pearl-Sewn Shirt is a cautionary romance describing the tragedy of a broken marriage; the heroic biography, which depicts a neglected man of high worth gradually receiving recognition, is represented by Wine and Dumplings; an authentic...

Internationally renowned Chinese literature scholar Cyril Birch was the first to assemble the finest translations of these seminal pieces in his now classic and still definitive introductory anthologies. The selections in this first volume span a two-thousand-year period: from the Chou Dynasty (1122221 B.C.) to the Y an Dynasty (A.D. 12801367), from the ancient Songs to the dramas of the fourteenth century, every major genre of Chinese literature is represented by a crucial work. Highlights include, in addition to the great poems of the T ang, outstanding examples of Han poetry, Six Dynasties...

Represented here are examples of various categories of Chinese literary composition-verses, songs, stories, essays, drama, and excerpts from novels from the Y an and Ching Dynasties, as well as the Republican Period. Highlights include Songs from the Y an Dynasty, The Temptation of Saint Pigsy by Wu Ch eng-en, a selection from Peony Pavilion, early Ch ing lyrics, and Six Chapters from A Floating Life by Shen Fu."