A Startled Romantic Dream in the Back Garden
杜丽娘游园惊梦
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‘True love conquers all’ is the theme of the Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭 Mudan Ting), a musical play of fifty-five scenes written by Tang Xianzu (汤显祖, 1550–1616) in Ming dynasty. Also known as The Romance of Return of Soul (还魂记 Huanhun Ji), the play contains a supernatural love story between Du Liniang (杜丽娘), the only daughter of the Nan’an prefect (南安太守) Mr. Du, and Liu Mengmei (柳梦梅), a civil-service examination candidate. At the beginning of the play, there was a passionate rendezvous of the two in the form of Liniang’s dream in the back garden with vigorously budding bushes during a warm spring afternoon. The encounter was so indelible to the adolescent girl that she eventually died of longing for her ‘dream’ lover. The play narrates how the couple overcome all the obstacles along the way to their union. Their experiences transcend not only time and space but also life and death.
The story scene depicted in the centre of the Shunzhi bowl in the Sir Michael Butler collection and the Kangxi dish in the collection of the V&A Museum was first unveiled by Dr Yibin Ni. His research article with pictorial and literary evidence is available for view here.
References:
- 倪亦斌:《明末时尚女子的情色告白》,《艺术世界》, 上海: 上海文艺出版社, 2004-03, pp.72–73.
- 倪亦斌:《明末时尚女子的情色告白》,《看图说瓷》, 北京: 中华书局, 2008, pp.1–10.
Fig 1: porcelain bowl with underglaze blue decoration, Shunzhi period (1644–61), courtesy of the Sir Michael Butler Collection
Fig 2-3: porcelain dish with overglaze enamelled decoration, Kangxi period (1662–1722), courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fig 4-5: porcelain charger with overglaze enamelled decoration, Kangxi period (1662–1722), courtesy of Rob Michiels Auctions, Asian Arts Feb 2017, Lot 1091
Fig 6: woodblock printed illustration, Scene 5, A Startled Dream While Visiting the Family Garden in the Story of the Return of the Soul, printed in the Kangxi period (1662–1722)