Tang Xianzu Quotes

Tang Xianzu , courtesy name Yireng , was a Chinese playwright of the Ming Dynasty.

Tang was a native of Linchuan, Jiangxi and his career as an official consisted principally of low-level positions. He successfully participated in the Provincial examinations at the age of 21 and at the imperial examinations at the age of 34. He held official positions in Nanjing, Zhejiang province, Guangdong province etc.. He retired in 1598 and returned to his hometown where he focused on writing.

His major plays are collectively called the Four Dreams, because of the decisive role dreams play in the plot of each one. All of them are still performed on the Chinese Kun opera stage. Generally considered his masterpiece, the Mudan Ting has been translated into English several times; each of the other plays has been translated once.

✵ 24. September 1550 – 29. July 1616

Tang Xianzu: 1 quote0 likes

Tang Xianzu Quotes

“Love is not love at its fullest if one who lives is unwilling to die for it, or if it cannot restore to life one who has so died.”

Tang Xianzu

Preface to Mudan Ting dated 1598; in The Peony Pavilion, trans. Cyril Birch (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. ix
Context: Love is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again. Love is not love at its fullest if one who lives is unwilling to die for it, or if it cannot restore to life one who has so died. And must the love that comes in dream necessarily be unreal? For there is no lack of dream lovers in this world.