Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/283

 Kghl trousers, a blue neck-tie, and last, but not least, the ever-characteristic walking-stick. Half the fun, in fact, was got out of this last accessory ; for with it each one of the two was continually threatening the other, and both united in violent gesticulations directed either against their brother-actors or sometimes against the audience at their feet.

Before going any further it may be as well to give a short outline of the play itself, which happens to be not uninteresting and is widely known from one end of China to the other. It is called " Slaying a Son at the Yamen Gate," and the plot, or rather story, runs as follows :

A certain general of the Sung dynasty named Yang, being in charge of one of the frontier passes, sent his son to obtain a certain wooden staff from an outlying barbarian tribe. In this expedition the son not only failed signally, but was further taken prisoner by a barbarian lady, who insisted upon his immediately leading her to the altar. Shortly after these nuptials he returns to his father's camp, and the latter, in a violent fit of anger, orders him to be taken outside the Yam6n gate and be there executed forthwith. As the soldiers are leading him away, the young man's mother comes and throw r s herself at the general's feet, and implores him to spare her son. This request the stern father steadily refuses to grant, even though his wife's prayers are backed up by those of his own mother, of a prince of the Imperial blood, and finally by the entreaties of the Emperor himself. At this juncture in rushes the barbarian wife of the general's condemned son, and as on a previous occasion the general himself had been taken prisoner by this very lady, and only ransomed on

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