Mistress & maid

de Chengshun Meng

"Translator Cyril Birch presents a tale regarded as one of the ten greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, available for the first time in English. After her father reneges on her marital pact, Jianiang (named "Bella" in Birch's translation), the mistress of the title, refuses to separate from her lover. The two have vowed to share "in life one room, in death one tomb." The witty subversion of both conventional morality and the arranged marriage makes this seventeenth-century play particularly innovative. Chinese critics have hailed it as essentially revolutionary for its depiction of youthful resistance to the oppression imposed by latter-day Confucian values, but as Birch notes in the introduction, "the glory of Mistress and Maid is the tender delicacy of the lovers' interactions." This depth of feeling also distinguishes the play from others of the "boy-meets-girl" genre so prevalent during the late-imperial age."--BOOK JACKET.