E.W.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

The following drama was selected from the “Hundred Plays of Yuen,” which has already supplied to Europe two specimens of the Chinese stage—­the first, called the “Orphan of Chaou,” translated by Pere Premare; and the second, entitled an “Heir in Old Age,” by the author of the present version.  “The Sorrows of Han” is historical, and relates to one of the most interesting periods of the Chinese annals, when the growing effeminacy of the court, and consequent weakness of the government, emboldened the Tartars in their aggressions, and first gave rise to the temporizing and impolitic system of propitiating those barbarians by tribute, which long after produced the downfall of the empire and the establishment of the Mongol dominion.

The moral of the piece is evidently to expose the evil consequences of luxury, effeminacy, and supineness in the sovereign.

  “When love was all an easy monarch’s care,
  Seldom at council—­never in a war.”

The hero, or rather the chief personage, of the drama, came to the throne very near the beginning of the Christian era, about B.C. 42.  The fate of the Lady Chaoukeun is a favorite incident in history, of which painters, poets, and romancers frequently avail themselves; her “Verdant Lamb” is said to exist at the present day, and to remain green all the year round, while the vegetation of the desert in which it stands is parched by the summer sun.

In selecting this single specimen from among so many, the translator was influenced by the consideration of its remarkable accordance with our own canons of criticism.  The Chinese themselves make no regular classification of comedy and tragedy; but we are quite at liberty to give the latter title to a play which so completely answers to the European definition.  The unity of action is complete, and the unities of time and place much less violated than they frequently are on our own stage.  The grandeur and gravity of the subject, the rank and dignity of the personages, the tragical catastrophe, and the strict award of poetical justice, might satisfy the most rigid admirer of Grecian rules.  The translator has thought it necessary to adhere to the original by distinguishing the first act (or Proem) from the four which follow it:  but the distinction is purely nominal, and the piece consists, to all intents and purposes, of five acts.  It is remarkable that this peculiar division holds true with regard to a large number of the “Hundred Plays of Yuen.”

The reader will doubtless be struck by the apparent shortness of the drama which is here presented to him; but the original is eked out, in common with all Chinese plays, by an irregular operatic species of song, which the principal character occasionally chants forth in unison with a louder or a softer accompaniment of music, as may best suit the sentiment or action of the moment.  Some passages have been embodied