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Interweaving a star-crossed romance with the decline and fall of the Ming dynasty in mid seventeenth-century China, The Peach Blossom Fan by Kong Shangren (1648-1718) is a masterpiece of world literature. This sweeping historical drama encompasses the pleasures and passions of courtesan culture, the allure and pitfalls of political idealism, the complex twists of court intrigues, and the horrors and trauma of war. While the play traces the fall of the Ming dynasty through the love story of its two main characters—Hou Fangyu, a young scholar, and a courtesan named Li Xiangjun (or, "Sovereign Fragrance")—its cast of characters also includes various scholars and military commanders; a villain who is also a playwright; an ambiguous mediator who is also a painter, a storyteller who becomes a fisherman; a singing teacher who becomes a woodcutter; an officer who becomes a Daoist; and a ritual master who is both onstage and a member of the audience.
As the play takes the readers inside the choices, dilemmas, and emotional turmoil of its diverse characters, it asks probing questions: How and why did the Ming dynasty, almost three hundred years old, come to an end? What is the scope of human agency during historical cataclysms? What forces shape memory and historical judgment? This compelling, readable, and faithful translation of the play includes an introduction on interpretive perspectives and the life and times of the playwright Kong Shangren as well as explanatory notes and a preface for each scene that serve as guides for the reader.
