Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/284

 272 CHINESE LITERATURE

payment of a heavy sum of money, he is so alarmed that he sits motionless and unable to utter a word while with a dagger she severs the cords that bind her hus- band, sets him free before the assembled party, and dares any one to lay a hand on him at his peril. The Emperor now loses his temper, and is enraged to think that General Yang should have been awed into granting to a barbarian woman a life that he had just before refused to the entreaties of the Son of Heaven. His Majesty, therefore, at once deprives the father of his command and bestows it upon the son, and the play is brought to a conclusion with the departure of young General Yang and his barbarian wife to subdue the wild tribes that are then harassing the frontier of China. The two foreigners are the pages or attendants of the barbarian wife, and accompany her in that capacity when she follows her husband to his father's camp.

The trick of dressing these pages up to caricature the foreigner of the nineteenth century, on the occasion when I saw the piece, was a mere piece of stage gag, but one which amused the people immensely, and elicited rounds of applause. But when the barbarian wife had succeeded in rescuing her husband from the jaws of death, there was considerable dissatisfaction in the minds of several of the personages on the stage. The Emperor was angry at the slight that had been passed upon his Imperial dignity, the wife and mother of the general, not to mention the prince of the blood, felt themselves similarly slighted, though in a lesser degree, and the enraged father was still more excited at having had his commands set aside, and seeing himself bearded in his own Yamen by a mere barbarian woman. It was

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