know not how to read; and, according to the Chinese penal code, the end of theatrical representations is 'to exhibit true or imaginary pictures of just and good men, chaste women, and loving and dutiful children—characters likely to lead the spectators to the practice of virtue.' Obscenity is a crime; and composers of obscene plays, says a Chinese writer quoted by Morrison, shall be severely punished in the abode of expiations, ming-fou, and their torment shall last as long as their plays remain on the earth."
Contrasting this aim of the Chinese drama with that of the æsthetic Athenian—for, in spite of the famous definition in the Poetics, we can scarcely speak of Attic tragedy, much less comedy, as possessing a moral purpose—critics who refuse to separate their ideals of literature from those of human conduct will probably agree with M. Bazin in placing the Attic sense of the beautiful below the didactic morality of the Celestial. Aristophanes, it is to be feared, stands condemned by Chinese judgment to a very lengthy experience of ming-fou; and as for such dramatists as Wycherley and Vanbrugh, their only hopes must depend on the rather dusty condition of their volumes nowadays. It may be true that the Chinese ideal is higher than that of our modern European dramas, which would limit itself to the truthful imitation of human character and custom in contemporary life. It may be that the Chinese is superior to the Indian dramatic ideal laid down in the prologue of the Málati and Mádhava,[1] and clearly expressing the dramatic taste of a cultured class such as the Bráhmans of India are known
- ↑ "Again," says this prologue, "what avails it to boast a knowledge of the Yoga, the Sankhya, the Upanishads, or the Vedas? Such knowledge is of no use for dramatic composition. Fertility of imagination, harmony of style, richness of invention—these are the qualities which mark education and genius in this kind of writing. Such is the drama written by our venerable friend Bhavabhúti."
