Chapter 1 Introduction
Hao Liu
1.1 Shakespeare and Traditional Chinese Opera
In 1902, Liang Qichao began to write a play, New Rome, for the traditional Chinese stage.1 In the prelude, Shakespeare appears riding on a cloud, foretelling a romance and a history of Shakespeare in the traditional Chinese opera, xiqu. Liang Qichao wrote the play to advocate new ideas to the “new people”, and the discussions and productions of Shakespeare in China are often related to the discourse of the prospect of Chinese culture, or the interplay between the traditional and the innovative. In 2016, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and his Chinese counterpart Tang Xianzu, a statue depicting an imagined encounter between the two playwrights was erected in the garden by the house where the bard was born.2 The association between Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu who wrote for Kun-opera, which was recognized as the “progenitor of all operas”, sparked more than academic interest. Since the early twentieth century, directors and various production teams have attempted to blend Shakespeare and Chinese traditional opera, using Chinese opera to familiarize Shakespeare’s plots and characters. Having been adapted to Kun opera, Peking opera, Yue opera, Huangmei opera, Guangdong Yue opera, Yu opera, Hebei opera, tanci, and other varieties of Chinese operas, Shakespeare is woven into the dramatic tradition of China.
This book explores the relationship between Shakespeare and Chinese theatrical traditions through the examples of three productions of Hamlet. Instead of surveying the varieties of adaptations in the century-long history, it examines what differences will occur at the micro level when Shakespeare’s plays are adapted into the form of Chinese traditional opera in the context of the last 30 years in the Chinese mainland, and why. It also discusses what is added to the refashioned Shakespeare’s plays, and the new possibilities between Shakespeare and Chinese xiqu for deeper interaction and mutual appreciation.
If the history of Shakespeare in traditional Chinese theatre is a metaphorical journey, the book takes three Chinese-opera productions of Hamlet as road signs: the Yue-opera Hamlet, produced in 1994 for the International Shakespeare Festival in Shanghai, the Peking-opera Hamlet (renamed The Revenge of Prince Zidan) that premiered in 2005, toured to various countries, and was revived in Shanghai in July 2023, and the Kun-opera I, Hamlet that was premiered in 2016, and revived in 2020
and August 2023. The three Hamlets will lead to three layers of discussion in this book, and will each be treated with a different method.
The Yue-opera Hamlet, which was 29 years ago, will serve as a reminder to look back at the recent history of assimilating Shakespeare into Chinese dramatic culture, and to view the cross-cultural adaptations in the historical context of the reception of Shakespeare in China. An introduction of the Yue-opera Hamlet will lead to a retrospective discussion of the role of Shakespeare in the Chinese discourse of the renaissance and re-evaluation of traditions since the early twentieth century.
Both the Peking-opera and Kun-opera productions of Hamlet were well received in theatres this summer, and I watched both performances and observed the interaction between the stage and the audience. Therefore, they will be treated both as “productions” that are fixed and stable and as “performances” that are transitory and interactive. A detailed analysis of the Peking-opera Hamlet demonstrates what is lost and gained in the negotiation of Shakespeare and Chinese theatrical traditions, in terms of characterization, dramatic structure, moral message, and aesthetic effects. The Peking-opera production is replete with telling artistic details that gesture to the “haunted stage”, to use Marvin Carlson’s term and discuss what memories the cross-cultural adaptations evoke on a traditional stage. The Kun-opera Hamlet is an experimental Kunqu production, despite Kunqu being an ancient genre of xiqu, which contrasts with the notion of “experimental”. This production invites a discussion of how the deep themes of Shakespeare’s play resonate with the pure aesthetic of Kun-opera. In addition to the three Hamlets, we will also refer to other productions of Shakespeare’s plays in traditional Chinese theatre over the past 30 years.
The three Hamlets exemplify certain characteristics of their times, but they do not represent all the cross-cultural Shakespeare adaptations. We chose them for the convenience of narrating and for vividness in discussing our topic. Symbolically, they each gesture to the past, the present, and the future of wedding Shakespeare with traditional Chinese opera, xiqu. The discussion of the three Hamlets aims to raise and answer questions about the possibilities of Shakespearean and Chinese theatrical traditions joining hands and reaching new depths of artistic expression in the context of “world drama”.
1.2 Chinese Shakespeare in Context
Xiqu was valued either as a “minor art” [xiao dao; 小道] or “fictional and playful” [戲也3] form, or as a “musical education to cultivate benevolence” [樂教; 仁]. The publication of serious research on xiqu, such as Wang Guowei’s A History of Drama in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, elevated it to an object of scholarly study. On the other hand, Shakespeare was regarded as “utopian visions of universal figures of modernity”4 in the early reception of his works and name in China, where modernization was a major intellectual concern. Publications that introduced the Western countries and their cultures in the mid and late nineteenth century frequently mentioned his name.
Some of the leading scholars who praised and commented on Shakespeare in their public writings were Lu Xun, who related Shakespeare to the new civilization, saying that people needed him to “preserve humanity and balance it, which led to today’s civilization”,5 Yan Fu, the translator who was famous for introducing Western ideas (especially Darwinian theory)6 and Liang Qichao7 who gave Shakespeare his Chinese name based on transliteration.
According to H. R. Jauss, “the first reception of a work by the reader includes a test of its aesthetic value in comparison with works already read”.8 Shakespeare had been closely related to the cultural progress and transition of China ever since his arrival, and thus his early reception was influenced by the evaluation of traditional Chinese theatre.
The early history of the reception of Shakespeare in China was closely linked to the controversies over the reforms of Chinese drama, when some intellectual reformers, aware of the power of literature, advocated drama as a means to educate the common people at the turn of the twentieth century.9 The introduction of Shakespeare and other Western authors coincided with objections to traditional Chinese drama in popular journals such as Twentieth Century Stage and The New Fiction.10 Liang Qichao and Liu Yazi also attempted to write new plays.
In the late 1910s and 1920s, the values and vices of traditional Chinese drama were fiercely debated by many famous scholars, including Hu Shih, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, Chen Duxiu, Fu Sinian, and Ouyan Yuqian. Fu Sinian, who was to become an influential public intellectual, made the most scathing argument: Chinese drama contained “no aesthetic value at all” and should be abolished.11
In that context, Shakespeare’s plays began to be performed in wenming xi (the early form of modern Chinese theatre, 1907–1918), before any serious and complete translation was published. For some Chinese dramatists and theorists, Shakespeare’s plays served as models to emulate, and even “the starting point” of new drama in China.12
The reception of Shakespeare in China has been a rich and diverse field of research, which contains several types of research. The type of overviews and in-depth discussions of the reception of Shakespeare in China is exemplified by works such as Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (Alexa Huang, Columbia University Press, 2009), A History of Shakespeare Criticism in China (Li Weimin, China Drama Press, 2006), Shakespeare in China (Sun Yanna, Henan University Press, 2010), Shakespeare in China (Murray J. Levith, New York: Continuum, 2004), Materialist Shakespeare and Modern China (Yang Lingui, Diss. Texas A & M University, 2003), Shakespeare’s Works in China (Li Changlin, Chinese Literature Studies, Vol. 2, 1999), Shakespeare in China: A Comparative Study of Two Traditions and Cultures (Zhang Xiaoyang, University of Delaware Press, 1996), A Brief History of Shakespeare Studies in China (Meng Xianqiang, Northeast Normal University Press, 1994), and Politics into Play: Shakespeare in 20th Century China (Wang Shuhua, Diss. Pennsylvania University, 1993). The type of focused studies on specific aspects of the reception is represented by works such as “Shakespeare in China: The Case of Zhu Shenghao” (William Baker and Tianhu Hao, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 34, no.
1 (2021): 26–30), “The Issues of Tradition and Modernity in the Adaptation and Reception of Shakespeare’s Plays” (Yang Lingui, Qiao Xueying, Sichuan Drama, 2014), “Art and Propaganda: The Translation and Introduction of Shakespeare’s Plays and the Social Progress of China in the First Half of the 20th Century” (Wang Jiankai, Foreign Literature, 2005), and “The Earliest Shakespeare Criticism in China” (Ruan Shen, Journal of Wuhan University, vol. 2, 1989). Among the reviews and pieces of research on the performance history of Shakespeare in China and comparative studies of Shakespeare and Chinese theatre or theatrical traditions are works such as Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China (Li Ruru, Hong Kong University Press, 2003), Shakespeare on the Stage of Chinese Opera (Cao Shujun, Harbin Press, 1989), “Shakespeare in Traditional Chinese Operas” (Zha Peide, Tian Jia, Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer, 1988), New Sites for Shakespeare (John Russell Brown, Routledge, 1999, 2013), and Shakespeare and Asia (Jonathan Locke Hart ed., Routledge, 2018).
1.3 Why Hamlet?
The appearance of Hamlet in Chinese in 1921, as the inaugural verbatim rendition of a Shakespearean drama in The Young China, manifested Shakespeare’s affinity with the new culture and the significance of Hamlet in the dissemination of Shakespeare to China.
Hamlet had been performed in China even before a formal and literal translation was completed. Chinese audiences have witnessed different versions of Hamlet, varying from the early adaptation in the 1910s and the Chuan opera “Killing the Elder Brother and Seizing the Sister-in-Law” (sha xiong duo sao; the Chinese title sounds explicit and violent), to a 1990s modern-drama version that reflected the contemporary psyche in the repertoire of Chinese huaju, and the Peking-opera and Kun-opera productions revived in the summer of 2023.
As a “universally recognized cultural icon”, and as “part of the complex exchange of people, goods, images, and texts in this age of globalization”, Hamlet “has not confined himself to his native turf”. This “nomad figure”13 journeyed to China and resonated profoundly with the mentality of Chinese people as a symbol of quandary. In retrospect, Hamlet exemplified the dilemma of Chinese intellectuals, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. Distressed by the cultural uncertainty of the time, Chinese intellectuals empathized with Hamlet and metamorphosed him into a sign of the agony between the old and the new, which was occasionally mirrored in the tension between thought and action.
In a short story by Ba Jin, Hamlet was taken as the archetype of young intellectuals who yearned for the courage to act and progress, but ended up in contemplation and withdrawal.14 Lao She’s short story “New Hamlet” was possibly the earliest parody of Hamlet in China.15 And in Lao She’s plan for his play Gui Qu Lai Xi [Returning; 歸去來兮] which would have been named “New Hamlet”, he had devised a plot about a “wise, contemplative, skeptical, pessimistic man who cannot take action”.16 Jiao Juyin, a prominent director and theatre theorist, and Liao Mosha, a famous essayist, linked Hamlet more directly to the character of Chinese
people, saying that the Chinese were “often too prudent to do anything demanding courage”17 and that Chinese intellectuals were confined to a “Hamletian” tragedy.18 There were more literary works in the 1930s and 1940s that alluded to Hamlet, who “had been an indispensable reference for the Chinese writers when they pondered over the fate of Chinese intellectuals”.19
The inability to act had caused melancholy in Chinese intellectuals who grew up to confront a time of cultural transition. And the loss of power was a result of both ideological confusions and the nullification of the imperial examination system, with which previous generations of orthodox intellectuals had engaged for over a thousand years. The fact that Hamlet was used as a symbol for the mental pains and uncertainty of that period testifies not only to the popularity of the Bard among Chinese intellectuals, but also to the ambiguity and mobility of bardolatry in China. The imagination of Chinese audiences and readers continuously “worked by restless, open-ended appropriation, adaptation and transformation”20 of Hamlet and other Shakespearean works, just as Shakespeare‘s imagination did with his own sources.
1.4 Methods
This book narrates withthe road signs of three cross-cultural adaptations of Hamlet in xiqu. They span two decades and reflect diverse perspectives on Shakespeare in China and his resonance with traditional Chinese theatre and artistry. Hence, the three productions of Hamlet will be approached from different angles.
The Yue-opera Hamlet of the 1990s serves as an illustration of the underlying logic in the historical reception of Shakespeare in China. The Yue-opera Hamlet, which was a sensation on the traditional xiqu stage, juxtaposed Westernized elements and the revival of traditional operatic aesthetics. This prompts us to explore the history behind the fusion of Shakespearean and Chinese aesthetics, and to contend that there are two parallel visions of Shakespeare in China: as a harbinger of new themes and forms, and as a reminder of, as well as a catalyst for, the reassertion of traditional values. Therefore, instead of scrutinizing the script and performance of the Yue-opera production, the main approach for the first Hamlet is to look from a production back to historical ideas and materials, especially publications from the first half of the twentieth century, when Shakespeare began to exert influence on the formation of new ideas in Chinese literature and theatre. The role of Shakespeare in the Chinese discourse of the renaissance and revaluation of traditions since the early twentieth century will be discussed. The key word for the discussion of the first Hamlet is history, which gestures to the past.
The third chapter concentrates on the second Hamlet, the Peking-opera The Revenge of Prince Zidan of the 2000s–2020s. The production will be discussed in detail, act by act, to dissect the mechanism of integrating Shakespeare with Chinese theatrical traditions. A meticulous comparison of the production and Shakespeare’s original demonstrates how the stage space interacts with the script to generate new imaginings. Since this production emphasizes traditional Peking-opera skills and aesthetics, the discussion will be conducted mainly from the viewpoint of theatrical
traditions, such as “typecasting” and the explicit articulation of moral vision, and the subtle but artistic expression of tragic emotions based on a tacit agreement on the artistic form between the stage and the audience. By drawing analogies between the novel elements in the adaptation and the conventions in the theme, structure, and characters of traditional Peking opera, this chapter aims to illuminate what is sacrificed and gained in the negotiation of Shakespeare and Chinese theatrical traditions and why. With reference to Marvin Carlson’s theory of the “haunted stage”, some traditions of xiqu artistry will be considered in the context of a stage with precedents, with reference to memories of the Peking-opera stage of the mid twentieth century, to present history in a new mode with traditional techniques in particular. Close reading and comparison are the main approach of this chapter. This cross-cultural Hamlet is not only regarded as a “production” that stages the text, but also experienced in theatre as a recent “show” that is ephemeral and elicits audience response in the theatre. The key word for the examination of the second Hamlet is comparison, which gestures to the present.
The fourth chapter starts with a brief introduction to the glorious past and contemporary predicament of Kunqu, the progenitor of Chinese operas. The kun-opera I, Hamlet, which premiered in 2016, is an avant-garde production. It derives from the plot development of the original text, but is a collage of scenes and lines from Hamlet rendered in Kunqu style. It amalgamates theatrical innovations and traditional xiqu artistry, and conveys a potent expression of the profound theme of uncertainty and solitude that resonates with modern people. Hence, this production is construed as a work of art that manifests subjectivity, as is evident in its title, I, Hamlet. The chapter accentuates the “I” as the origin for both the contemporary psyche and the venerable art tradition. The discussion of the play emanates from two observations: how the stage design and the versatile actor epitomize the dichotomy of “one” and “many”, and how Kunqu artistry articulates Hamletian vacillation and ambiguity. In this chapter, the author converses with the actor on where Kunqu intersects with Shakespeare and world drama. The chapter strives to comprehend the subjectivity of the artist that synthesizes originality and conventionality in theatre. The discussion of this production is based on both close analysis of the performance and theoretical comprehension of Kunqu aesthetics. To correspond to the distinctive personality of the Kunqu production, this chapter incorporates insights from interviews with the leading actor who initiated and conceived the whole idea of the adaptation. The key word for the analysis of this third Hamlet is subjectivity, which gestures to the future.
The fifth chapter envisions the potential of Shakespeare and Chinese theatrical traditions to collaborate and attain depths of artistic expression. This vision is auspicious when we consider the mobility in the works of both Shakespeare and his Chinese counterparts, based on the playwrights’ indebtedness to previous sources, the adaptability in theatre-going environments, and the dissemination of their works in the world. Although Shakespeare’s works travel far more widely and easily than Tang Xianzu’s, it is still feasible for both traditions to learn from each other. The chapter culminates by proposing that Shakespeare viewed through the prism of traditional Chinese aesthetics is not just distorted but enriched. Likewise,
traditional Chinese opera has authentic beauty that is far from being fully divulged to the world.
Notes
1 Liang Qichao [飲氷室主人(梁啟超)], “Prelude” of New Rome [新羅馬傳奇: 楔子一齣], Sein Min Choong Bou [新民叢報], vol. 10 (1902): 81.
2 Sun Wei, “Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu meet at Stratford-upon-Avon” in Global Times [環球時報], April 24, 2016, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/979815.shtml.
Simon Woodings, “Tang Xianzu’s statue unveiled at Shakespeare’s Birthplace” in Herald (Stratford-upon-Avon, April 27, 2017). http://www.stratford-herald.com/69714-tang-xianzu-statue-unveiled-shakespeares-birthplace.html.
3 As in the preface to a Qing-Dynasty collection of drama “且夫戲也者,戲也; 固言乎其非真也”. Xu Weisen [許渭森], preface to vol. 11 of Zhui Bai Qiu 摆缀白裘·第十一集序闭.
4 Alexander C. Y. Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (New York: Columbia UP, 2009): 18.
5 Lu Xun [魯迅], “On the History of Science” [科學史教篇] in The Complete Works of Lu Xun [魯迅全集], vol. 1 (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1981): 17.
6 He mentions Shakespeare in his translator’s note. T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, trans. Yan Fu (Beijing: China Science Publishing, 1971): 57.
7 Here is an example of Liang’s mention of Shakespeare. Liang Qichao, The Collected Works of Yinbingshi, vol. 1 (of Uncollected Essays), ed. Xia Xiaohong (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2005) 126.
8 Jauss, Hans Robert, and Elizabeth Benzinger. “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory” in New Literary History, vol. 2, no. 1 (1970): 8. https://doi.org/10.2307/468585.
9 Wang Jimin [王濟民], The Scientific Trend of Thought and Scientific Criticism of Literature in the Late Qing Dynasty and the Early Period in the Republic of China [晚清民初的科學思潮和文學的科學批評] (Beijing: Social Science Press of China, 2004): 80–1.
10 The contributors of such articles included the renowned poet Liu Yazi and the radical intellectual Chen Duxiu who was later Dean of Humanities at Peking University. Chen Duxiu (San Ai) [陳獨秀], “On Chinese Opera” [論戲曲] in Anhui Vernacular Journal [安徽俗話報], vol. 11 (1904): 1–6; Ya Lu (Liu Yazi) [柳亞子], “Foreword” [發刊詞] in Twentieth Century Stage [二十世紀大舞臺], vol. 1 (1904): 1–5.
11 Fu Sinian [傅斯年], “My Views on the Reformation of Drama” [予之戲劇改良觀] in New Youth [La Jeunesse; 新青年], vol. 5, no. 4 (1918): 349–60.
12 Yuan Sheng (Huang Yuansheng) ed. and trans., “On New Drama” in Monthly Journal of Fictions [小說月報], vol. 5, no. 1 (1914): 1–2 and no. 2 (1914): 3–6.
13 Gabriele Rippl, “Hamlet’s Mobility: The Reception of Shakespeare’s Tragedy in US American and Canadian Narrative Fiction”, in Shakespeare and Space: Theatrical Exploration of the Spatial Paradigm (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 229.
14 Ba Jin [巴金], “Spring Rain”, in The Complete Works of Ba Jin, vol. 10 (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1989): 246–7; first published in Mercury, vol. 1, no. 1 (Oct 10, 1934). Qian Liqun points out the connection between this story and Hamlet in his book The Rich Pains: The Eastward Moves of Don Quixote and Shakespeare [豐富的痛苦：堂吉訶德與哈姆雷特的東移] (Beijing, 2007): 247.
15 Alexander C. Y. Huang, Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009): 87.
16 Lao She [老舍], “On My Seven Plays” [閒話我的七個戲劇] in The Collected Plays of Lao She [老舍劇作全集], vol. 1 (Beijing: China Theatre Press, 1982): 556–7.
17 Jiao Juyin [焦菊隱], “Shakespeare and Hamlet” [莎士比亞與《哈姆雷特》] in The Collected Works of Jiao Juyin [焦菊隱文集], vol. 2 (Beijing: Culture and Art Press [文化藝術出版社], 1998): 172.
18 Huai Xiang (Liao Mosha) [懷湘（廖沫沙）], “The Hamletian Tragedy” [哈姆雷特式的悲劇], in The Collected Works of Liao Mosha [廖沫沙文集], vol. 1 (Beijing: Beijing Press, 1986): 256. First published in Xinhua Supplement of Xinhua Daily (Chongqing, October 7, 1943). Qian Liqun quotes it in The Rich Pains: 282.
19 Qian Liqun, The Rich Pains: 247, 249.
20 Stephen Greenblatt, “Theatrical Mobility” in Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, Stephen Greenblatt, Ines G. ?upanova, Reinhard Meyer-Kalkus, Heike Paul, Pál Ny?ri, and Friederike Pannewick. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 76.
This chapter was taken from Liu's monagraph The Romance of Three Hamlets.
Liu, Hao. “Introduction.” The Romance of Three Hamlets: Shakespeare through a Chinese Prism, by Hao Liu, 1st ed., Routledge, 2024, pp. 1–8. DOI.org (Crossref), .