The People’s Republic of Shakespeare

In this post I’m going to attempt to summarize the brief chronology of Shakespeare in Mainland China before and after Mao’s presidency.

The idea that one of the greatest English writers of all time is being simultaneously praised as a Marxist is astounding to most Western critics. However the technique of retrospectively varnishing philosophies onto Shakespeare is not unique to China. There are innumerable essays about Shakespeare as a psychoanalyst, existentialist, and general visionary for any philosophy. What is unique to this country is the speed in which a general literary philosophy changed. It is interesting to look at how Shakespeare was introduced in China and how the author evolved from a figure of praise into a banned topic of study in the span of a few decades.

In the Beginning:

Shakespeare stories themselves made their way into Chinese society in 1903, with the introduction of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. It did not take long for Chinese academics to appreciate the foreign texts. A year later Lin Shu wrote a thorough version of the Lamb stories in classical Chinese. It was another 17 years before the country supplied more authentic production but Gu Zhongyi’s translation of The Merchant of Venice introduced China to the first original text performance.

Marxist Roots:

Before 1949, Shakespeare may have received attention from the academic elites, but the public remained uninterested. In an era of continuous armed conflict and violence, the average peasant was dispassionate about a Western author, especially after the suffering caused by Allied forces during the Opium War. Additionally, it took a Communist campaign to simplify the written language and abandon the more classical script of the upper class to bring literacy to the nation.

Finally, the ascension of the Communist Party in 1949 forged a brief union with the Soviets in Russia. It was in these years during which the USSR acted as China’s main ally that interest in Shakespeare skyrocketed. China imported a great deal of translated Russian literature from its “Elder Brother” including standard examples of Marxist literary criticism. Chinese critics most often pondered questions about Shakespeare’s intended audience, concluding that he was writing for the masses instead of for the elite and his goal was to reveal the tribulations of capitalism.

The escalation in Shakespeare studies would not last for long. By the early 1960’s, China had broken ties with the Soviets and was soon condemning all foreign texts and authors. A few years later the Cultural Revolution put a stop to all exposure to non-approved literature. The message of “one age, one author and one piece of literary work” closed schools and museums, and replaced all artistic endeavors with copies of Quotations From Chairman Mao and eight “model dramas”. In the twelve years of this harsh political campaign (1965-1977) Shakespeare was evicted from China.

To the Chinese, Shakespeare is not seen as a symbol of Western oppression or cultural invasion, but rather as a kind of Marxist hero. Edward Berry, a Western professor teaching Shakespeare at Hunan Normal University reports spotting a poster of the Western literary giant in a Chagsha poster shop. This banner extolled the value of Shakespeare in a warm and exclamatory tone with explanations such as “He upheld the liberation of individuality, opposed the bondage of feudalism and religion, reflected humanist ideals in an age of rising capitalism” ..

Joining the International Community:

There is a rumor that the day after Mao’s death, lines to buy The Merchant of Venice, the most popular Shakespeare play in China, overflowed into the street. Doubtful as this myth may be, it is a symbol of the changes in the political atmosphere that occurred during Deng Xiaoping’s presidency.

After the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution began to fade, Chinese Shakespearian scholars began to rejoin the international academic community. The Shakespeare Society of China was founded and gained membership in the International Shakespeare Association in 1984. The next year The Shakespeare Quarterly published articles from Chinese writers for the first time. Despite the backlash against the Bard, Shakespeare Studies (Shashi bi ya Yanjiu) was the first Mainland journal dedicate to a non-Chinese writer. Considering that this reversal of Shakespeare’s fortune occurred in 1983, it is a turn significant enough to cause whiplash.

In 1986, the Shanghai Shakespeare Festival accelerated the pace of China’s interest in Shakespeare. The thirteen-day festival hosted over twenty-four performances of sixteen Shakespeare plays, some of which were nationally televised to a reported audience of 100,000. The list of entries included a handful of revivals, six adaptations, four Chinese premieres, and one puppet play, but only two productions were in English. This linguistic observations illustrates the enthusiasm of the Mainlanders to make Shakespeare performances distinctly Chinese.

The government has not squashed study of a foreign playwright with debatable allegiances to the working class, but it has not exactly smiled upon Shakespeare either. The Chinese Shakespeare Society was recently shut down after failing to file paperwork correctly. The action appears to be innocuous enough but rumors abound about the government’s joy in finally getting rid of a worrisome pest.

In the last decade or so, many productions have gotten bolder and more daring as the atmosphere has relax. Some directors self-censor and remove questionable content before performances but others push the envelope and depict dictators like Richard III as cruelly manipulating the populous.

Soon I hope to post an entry about the differences between Shakespeare reception in the Mainland and in outlying cities like Hong Kong and Taibei. As always, I welcome questions or comments.