Dream, Drama, Metadrama: Tang Xianzu and/in Jiang Shiquan’s Linchuan Meng (Dreams of Linchuan)

DREAM, DRAMA, METADRAMA: TANG XIANZU AND/IN JIANG SHIQUAN’S LINCHUAN MENG (DREAMS OF LINCHUAN) QIANCHENG LI Louisiana State University1 Jiang Shiquan 蔣士銓 (1725–1785) is one of the most important poets and playwrights of eighteenth-century China.2 In poetry he was often grouped together with Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716–1797) and Zhao Yi 趙翼 (1727–1814), to form the so-called three masters (san dajia 三大家) of the Qianlong reign-period (1736– 1795), and his dramatic works were held in high esteem by traditional critics. Li Diaoyuan 李調元 (1734–1803), in his Yucun quhua 雨村曲話 (Yucun’s talks on qu3 ), regarded Jiang’s plays as “ranking the highest of recent times” (jinshi diyi 近時第一); Yang Enshou 楊恩壽 (b. 1834; juren 1870), in his Ciyu conghua 詞餘叢話 (Gathered talks on qu), considered a collection of nine of Jiang’s plays to be “one of the great works of the Qianlong period” (Qianlong shi yi da zhuzuo 乾隆時一大著作); and Liang Tingnan 梁廷柟 (1796–1861), in his Quhua 曲話 (Talks on qu), speaking of the same nine plays, thought that “of the works of recent decades, there has been nothing to surpass them” 近數十年作者, 亦無以尚之.4 For most of the modern era, however, the attention he received in Chinese was rather scanty, and even worse in English. Fortunately, the tide has begun to change in recent decades, which have seen the appearance of an unprecedented amount of scholarly work on him as both poet and playwright.5 # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2015 DOI: 10.1179/0193777415Z.00000000026 1 I would like to gratefully acknowledge my debt to a number of people for their help in making this paper better. They include Robert E. Hegel, my graduate advisor; David Rolston, editor of this journal; and the two anonymous readers. I very much appreciate their careful reading, suggestions, and criticism. 2 Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956), p. 72, refers to him as “the best-known dramatist of the eighteenth century.” 3 Qu can refer to either the particular poetic form used for the arias of northern and southern drama (beiqu/nanqu北曲/南曲), or to the plays themselves. 4 These three quotations are collected in Jiang Shiquan yanjiu ziliao ji 蔣士銓研究資料集 (Collected research material on Jiang Shiquan; Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin, 1985), pp. 152, 155– 56, and 153, and in the more easily available Xu Guohua 徐國華, Jiang Shiquan yanjiu 蔣士銓研究 (Research on Jiang Shiquan; Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2010), p. 235. The first work was compiled by the Chinese Department of Shangrao shizhuan 上饒師專 (Shangrao Normal College), which is located near Jiang Shiquan’s hometown and was an early center of scholarly publication on him beginning in the 1980s. 5 For a review of Chinese language scholarship on Jiang Shiquan, see the appendix on this subject in Xu Guohua, Jiang Shiquan yanjiu, pp. 233–50. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34.1 (July 2015): 1–21 In this article I wish to focus in particular on Jiang Shiquan’s Linchuan meng 臨川夢 (Dreams of Linchuan; 1774).6 Of foremost interest is the fact that it features the famous Ming playwright Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616) as its protagonist, but it has also been regarded as Jiang’s masterpiece. As we will see, it presents a very idiosyncratic and revisionist portrait of Tang Xianzu, his life, and his plays. Before proceeding further, however, some preliminary remarks about Jiang Shiquan and the general characteristics of his plays are in order. Jiang had a passion for writing plays. At the age of twenty-seven (1751),7 he practically penned by himself, on behalf of the gentry of his province, four plays, collectively titled Xijiang zhujia 西江祝嘏 (Birthday wishes from Jiangxi), on the occasion of the Empress Dowager’s birthday.8 According to Li Diaoyuan’s Yucun quhua, late in life Jiang managed to write a total of fifteen plays using his left hand when his right hand became unusable. Li says that these plays were never published9 ; they certainly do not appear to be extant. Jiang is arguably the last great master of chuanqi 傳奇 drama, the main dramatic genre of the Ming and Qing dynasties. A well-known poet and connoisseur of parallel prose,10 his plays are characterized by elegant diction...