The tragedy of Dou E

Author: Wang Yinming
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: China is a literary powerhouse, and classical literature is a magnificent gem that has grown in the soil of our national traditional culture. Our nation's traditional cultural spirit has nurtured it, making it dazzling and fragrant. As one of the forms of classical literature, dramatic art has long been regarded as a tool for moral education on the high stage and an instrumental means to reform customs and rectify the people's hearts. For thousands of years, it has nurtured our national cultural spirit of truth, goodness, and beauty with its humanistic spirit of praising virtue and condemning evil, as well as its beautiful national forms. Any nation that belittles its own traditional cultural spirit will be powerless to stand among modern nations; to deny or neglect the inheritance of the spirit of truth, goodness, and beauty in our national culture is tantamount to cutting off its own roots. Without roots, how can there be flourishing flowers and lush leaves! Based on this idea, we have invited a group of experts and scholars to rewrite some excellent classical dramas into popular stories, editing and releasing this series of "Chinese Classical Literature Story Books" in separate volumes and batches to delight readers.
Guan Hanqing was a Yuan Dynasty playwright. He is a representative figure in ancient Chinese theatrical creation. There is little information available about Guan Hanqing's life, and we can only glean a general outline from scattered records. According to the Record of the Ghosts (《》) by the late Yuan Dynasty playwright Zhong Si Cheng, "Guan Hanqing was from Dadu (present-day Beijing), an official in the Imperial Medical College, and styled as Yi Zhai Sou" (). In some editions of Record of the Ghosts, "Imperial Medical College official" () is written as "Imperial Medical College household" (). Checking the History of Jin or the History of Yuan does not reveal the official title "Imperial Medical College official," whereas "household" () was indeed one of the registration categories in the Yuan Dynasty, under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Medical College. Therefore, Guan Hanqing was likely a doctor working in the Imperial Medical College during the Yuan Dynasty. The Injustice to Dou E (The Story of the Orphaned Daughter) is his most outstanding representative work. In the play, he successfully portrays the typical image of Dou E, a beautiful, kind, and resolute laboring woman. She lost her mother at the age of seven and her father at ten, was sold into servitude as a child bride to pay off debts; soon after marrying, her husband died, and she became a widow. She faced numerous troubles at her doorstep as a widow and was subjected to all kinds of humiliation by ruffians like Zhang Lueri. He framed her by falsely accusing her of murder, leading to a trial for poisoning. To protect her elderly mother from torture, she was coerced into falsely confessing to a crime under the severe interrogation of the corrupt official Tao Ji, and was sentenced to death. Refusing to accept her fate, she cursed the heavens, the earth, and the corrupt officials on the execution ground, vowing to take revenge on the injustice of the world—making three oaths before her execution: the first was snow falling in June, the second was her blood splattering three feet of white cloth, and the third was a three-year drought in Chu Prefecture.