The Chinese Conception of the Theatre by Hsu Tao-ching (review)

Book Reviews · confronted by a fonner lover who intends to publish evidence of Latymer's carefully guarded homosexuality. Kiernan suggests the possibility that "Hugo's dilemma was Coward's nightmare fantasy" (p. 136) and that Coward was tentatively revealing his private life to his public. Gray's more interesting argument examines the play's similarities to nineteenth-century melodramas (the evidence ofHugo'5 homosexuality is a packet ofold love letters waved in his face), Coward's unresolved attitudes about "the effect of the sixties' relative sexual freedom on the theatre CHurrah for free speech and the death ofliterature' he wrote after the Lady Chatterley case had been won)" (p. 108), and the impact ofcensorship repressions on Coward and other homosexual writers of his era who were compelled to "express themselves in alien and elliptical ways" (p. 112). Coward takes no positive or negative moral stand on Hugo's homosexuality (or his own), although it is made clearthat Hugo believes that the revelation of his past will ruin him with bourgeois society. For Coward the question of morality focused on Hugo's shabby treatment of his fonner lover and, most significantly, on his fundamental public and private dishonesty. While Kiernan emphasizes that Coward's style grew out of a "serious" use offrivolity, which he views as "a kind ofa aesthetic for Coward" (p. 158), especially "when it was edged with insouciance" (p. 159), Gray points out that although Coward "may not have been 'great' in the sense of a Shakespeare or a Chekhov" (p. 113), he managed to create "a vein of erotic comedy that was both original and truthful" (p. 113). Gray concludes thatthe continued appeal ofCoward's plays lies in the fact that in an era of shifting values Coward's "stylish lovers are at once an idealised image of what a relationship can be like and a warning" (p. 199). In an era when social and political relationships between the sexes are "undergoing traumatic changes, literary works which create strong images of those relationships past and present provide a touchstone for a new dialectic" (p. 198). Gray's insightful volume includes seven production photographs and a chronology of Coward's plays in order of their composition, and although Kiernan's book lacks photographs, he includes a slightly longer chronology covering the most significant works and important ~vents in the professional and personal life of an artist who Gray describes as "his own impresario and his own invention" (p. 199). JAMES ASHER, WABASH COLLEGE HSU TAO-CHING. The Chinese Conception of the Theatre. Seattle: University of Washington Press 1985. Pp. xxiii, 685, illustrated. $35.00. The Chinese Conception of the Theatre leaves the reader with the impression of two books rather than one. The first is readable and full of insight; the second is dense and repetitive. Hsu Tao-ching, the author, is at times enlightening and at other times irritating. This blend of strengths and weaknesses means the reader has some sifting to do - but in the end it is worth the effort. The book rewards the patient reader with a clear, penetrating look into the Chinese theatre. Book Reviews 599 Hsu Tao-ching says in rus preface that The Chinese Conceplion oflhe Theatre records the author's lifelong interest in Chinese theatre and that the long journey of the manuscript reflects the author's circumstances through wars and revolutions. It is a mammoth labour of love filling 685 pages - one is tempted to measure it in inches. The book is enormous and crammed with detail. Readers should understand beforehand that when Hsu Tao-ching writes of Chinese theatre he means two specific types, the Peking operaand the K'un Ch'u which he treats together as classical theatre. And when he refers to "modem Chinese theatre" he is describing the classical theatre as performed in China in the 19305. He is not concerned with developments after that. One other thing the reader should know before slartingout, although the book was published in 1985, it was actually written in 1955. The author does say the manuscript went on a long journey. Writing in the 50S about Chinese theatre in the 30S does not make the book out ofdate...