Mistress and Maid

by Meng Chengshun, Cyril Birch (Translator)

Mistress & Maid, one of the greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, is here available for the first time in English. Acclaimed translator Cyril Birch presents the bittersweet tale of Bella, daughter of the Wang family, her maid Petal, and the young scholar Shen Chun. After her father reneges on her marital pact, Bella refuses to renounce her love for Shen, with whom she has vowed to share "in life one room, in death one tomb." The subversion of both conventional morality and the arranged marriage through vivid drama and witty comic scenes makes this seventeenth-century play particularly innovative. Chinese critics have hailed it as essentially revolutionary for its depiction of youthful resistance to latter-day Confucian values, but as Birch notes in the introduction, "the glory of Mistress & Maid is the tender delicacy of the lovers' interactions." This depth of feeling also distinguishes the play from others of the "talent-meets-beauty" genre so prevalent during the late-imperial age.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2001

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mistress and Maid is another long romantic drama in the chuanqi tradition, much in the style and content of The Peony Pavilion. Like Bridal Du, the heroine, Bella, dies of lovesickness. This time, however, Bella does not come back to life, and the male lover, Shen Chun (one of four Shens in the play, incidentally) also dies and meets her in the afterworld (called Yellow Springs).

Mistress and Maid includes much lovely love poetry about love, and the characters are delicately and beautifully drawn (although their constant lamentations can get a little tiresome). But it is also a very long play, and I only read the key scenes that are often performed.

While a very good play, it is not as good as The Peony Pavilion or The Lute. If you’re interested in Chuanqi drama, I’d start with one of those two classics. All these plays, however, are primarily for lovers of drama and Chinese history and art. These works are formable is not for the casual reader.