Worldly Stage: Theatricality in Seventeenth-Century China by Sophie Volpp (review)

It may be a coincidence that Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which gives us the line “All the world’s a stage,” was written in the same year (1599) as the Chinese classic Mudan ting (The Peony Pavilion) by Tang Xianzu. Mudan ting is known for its protagonist Du Liniang, who pines away and subsequently dies after meeting the scholar Liu Mengmei in her dream, only to be resurrected by him from her tomb. It is, however, certainly no accident that Sophie Volpp chose to place The Peony Pavilion at the beginning of a century in which “theatrical modes of spectatorship furnished models of social spectatorship” (258), as she argues in her provocative new study, Worldly Stage: Theatricality in Seventeenth-Century China. The monograph focuses on two societal phenomena that shaped the century’s sense of the relationship between life and the stage, particularly from the viewpoint of the elite literati. The first phenomenon was the overabundance of wealth at the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), which spawned a nouveau riche class that emulated the elite literati in their pursuit of social status by resorting to literary archaism, a formulaic regurgitation of classical texts. This led to a perspective about the relation between the world and the stage whereby “theatrical roles are likened to social roles, and theatrical spectatorship becomes the training ground for the recognition of social imposture and inauthenticity, [... which] could well be cast as anti-theatricalist” (8). The other mode of thought regarding the world as a stage stemmed from Ming’s loss to the Manchu-controlled Qing in 1644, which altered the lifestyle of many in the elite class. Consequently:

In the second and more profound understanding of the relation between world and stage, the stage becomes a space that allows the spectator to apprehend the illusory nature of all forms. Reading drama, viewing theater, and fraternizing with actors train the social spectator to enter the spectacle and immerse himself in it, to engage with illusion even while understanding it to be such [...]. The most refined spectator [...] has a capacity for simultaneously impassioned and dispassionate observation and moves headlong into the tangle of illusion and disillusion. In this understanding of theater and theatricality, only the vulgar seek to distinguish between illusion and disillusion.

(8–9)

While the first mode is represented in the book by The Peony Pavilion, the second is mainly discussed in relation to Kong Shangren’s Taohua shan (The Peach Blossom Fan), written exactly a hundred years later in 1699. This love story between the courtesan Li Xiangjun and the late-Ming scholar Hou Fangyu dramatizes life during dynastic transition. While both plays have received much scholarly attention in recent years, Volpp’s world-as-stage thesis allows for illuminating new readings of the plays. She focuses on minor characters and their functions: the formulaic and vulgarized interpretation of classical texts by the pedantic tutor Chen Zuiliang and Daoist nun Sister Stone in the former play; and, in the latter, the storyteller Liu Jingting’s professional capacity to see through societal pretentions, which eventually allows him to bring the lovers to a Daoist monastery where they reject the world and their passion.

Between these two bookends, and apart from the first two chapters that lay out the historical and theoretical foundations of the book, Volpp examines several other groups of literary works, including essays, jokes, and plays. Two pieces receive special and lengthy discussion: the northern zaju play Nan wanghou (The Male Queen), which tells the story of a young man who is a male consort to the King of Linchuan before he is coerced into marrying the King’s sister, adding further complexities to the performance of gender; and a group of love poems written by early-Qing high-ranking officials and literary luminaries around the homoerotic relationship between the famous poet Chen Weisong and the actor Xu Ziyun. Volpp is especially persuasive here in arguing that the seemingly homoerotic...