1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China

Tian Yuan Tan is Reader in Chinese Studies at SOAS, University of London, UK, and the Secretary-General of the European Association for Chinese Studies.Paul Edmondson is Head of Research at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Honorary Fellow of The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK.Shih-pe Wang is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan.

• Foreword by Wilt L. Idema, Harvard UniversityIntroduction by Tian Yuan Tan, Paul Edmondson, Shih-pe Wang1) Setting the Scene: Playwrights and Localities- Yongming Xu, ‘The Backdrop of Regional Theatre to Tang Xianzu’s Drama’- Paul Edmondson, ‘Stratford-upon-Avon: 1616’2) Classics, Tastes, and Popularity- Wei Hua, ‘The “Popular Turn”in the Elite Theatre of the Ming after Tang Xianzu: Love, Dream, and Deaths in The Tale of the West Loft’- Nick Walton, ‘Blockbusters and Popular Stories’3) Making History- Ayling Wang, ‘Shishiju as Public Forum: The Crying Phoenix and the Dramatization of Current Political Affairs in Late Ming China’ - Helen Cooper, ‘Dramatizing the Tudors’4) The State and the Theatre- Tian Yuan Tan, ‘Sixty Plays from the Ming Palace, 1615-1618’- Janet Clare, ‘Licensing the King’s Men: From Court Revels to Public Performance’5) The Transmission of Dramatic Texts and Printing- Stephen H. West, ‘Tired, Sick, and Looking for Money: Zang Maoxun in 1616’- Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Status Anxiety: Arguing about Plays and Print in Early Modern London’6) Dramatic Authorship and Collaboration- Patricia Sieber, ‘Is There a Playwright in This Text? The 1610s and the Consolidation of Dramatic Authorship in Late Ming Print Culture’- Peter Kirwan, ‘“May I subscribe a name?”: Terms of Collaboration in 1616’ 7) Audiences, Critics, and Reception - Shih-pe Wang, ‘Revising Peony Pavilion: Audience Reception in Presenting Tang Xianzu’s Text’- Anjna Chouhan, ‘“No epilogue, I pray you”: Audience Reception in Shakespearian Theatre’8) Music and Performance - Mei Sun, ‘Seeking the Relics of Music and Performance: An Investigation of Chinese Theatrical Scenes Published in the Early Seventeenth Century (1606–1616)’- David Lindley, ‘Music in the English theatre of 1616’9) Theatre in Theory and Practice- Regina Llamas, ‘Xu Wei’s A Record of Southern Drama: The Idea of a Theatre at the Turn of Seventeenth-Century China’- Will Tosh, ‘Taking Cover: 1616 and the Move Indoors’10) Theatre across Genres and Cultures- Xiaoqiao Ling, ‘Elite Drama Readership Staged in Vernacular Fiction: The Western Wing and The Retrieved History of Hailing’- Kate McLuskie, ‘“There be salmons in both”: Models of Connection for Seventeenth-Century English and Chinese Drama’Afterword by Stanley Wells, CBE, Shakespeare Birthplace TrustNotes on ContributorsList of Cited Works

The sets of essays invite the reader to make connections on a common theme, including the relationship between the state and the theatre, the restaging of history in the playwrights’ work, and audiences’ contemporaneous reception of the plays. The dialogue created between the essays illuminates both Shakespeare’s and Tang’s plays and their cultural contexts and offers a unique methodology that others might follow. 1616 contributes to the limited English-language scholarship on Tang and Ming Dynasty drama and approaches Shakespeare by looking at one particular turning point.