Personal Library -- The Peony Pavilion

Author: Tang Xianzu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The Peony Pavilion is the masterpiece of Tang Xianzu, a great composer of the Ming Dynasty, when the author's thoughts and art had already matured. The Ming Dynasty story Du Liangni's Love and Rebirth provided the basic plot for The Peony Pavilion. In the play, certain original lines from the story are preserved in the spoken parts of the scenes A Dream of the Peony, A Search for the Dream, and A Tragic Death. In the novel, after Du Liangni is resurrected, a marriage based on social status is successfully arranged. However, in the opera, Tang Xianzu conducted a creative transformation, blending the mythological story with the realities of Ming Dynasty society, giving it a strong anti-feudal and anti-traditionalist tone and embodying the glorious ideal of pursuing individual freedom. The heroine, Du Liangni, is one of the most beloved young female characters in classical opera. Her birth and social status dictate that she should become a virtuous wife and mother who adheres to the "Three Obediences and Four Virtues." Her life lesson is the first poem of the Book of Songs, Quanju. Traditional views consider it a praise of the "virtues of empresses and consorts" and the best reading material for young women. Yet she intuitively recognizes it as a love song. Encouraged by her maid Chunxiang, she secretly leaves her secluded room. "Without visiting the garden, how would one know the beauty of spring," she muses, as the vibrant nature of spring awakens her youthful vitality. She lives in an environment shrouded in feudal etiquette, almost isolated from the world, helplessly watching her youth fade. Unable to act, she can only suppress her passionate feelings in her heart. Tang Xianzu did not follow the conventional approach of previous novels and operas, where characters fall in love at first sight, court each other in the garden, and secretly pledge their love. Instead, he arranges for Du Liangni to meet her lover in a dream after her garden visit, followed by a scene of her A Search for the Dream after the tryst. A Dream of the Peony and A Search for the Dream are the outbursts of the passion that has been building in Du Liangni, as well as her practical act of resisting the real world. The emotional power of The Peony Pavilion lies in its strong romantic ideal of pursuing individual freedom and opposing feudalism. This ideal emerges as the antithesis of the feudal system. All that is good and virtuous belongs to Du Liangni. Tang Xianzu successfully portrays her beauty, but the passages that depict her emotions and ideals are even more captivating. The Peony Pavilion shows that she dies not because of the destruction of love, but because of her futile longing for love. Through Du Liangni's character, The Peony Pavilion expresses the cries of the vast majority of young men and women at the time for individual liberation, freedom of love, and the autonomy of marriage, while exposing the devastation of feudal etiquette on people's happy lives and beautiful ideals.