Writers › Writer / Poet
Tang Xianzu
Ming dramatist from Linchuan, banished for criticising the grand secretaries, who left office to write The Peony Pavilion and the other Four Dreams of Linchuan
Mural of The Peony Pavilion, a work by this person.
In a spring garden, a young woman dreams beneath peonies and meets a scholar among falling petals. The pavilion and blossoms hold the longing that carries her dream into life.
Also known as Zi Yireng · Hao Ruoshi · Qingyuan Daoren
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Tang Xianzu, courtesy name Yireng, styled Ruoshi and the Daoist of Qingyuan, came from Linchuan in Fuzhou, Jiangxi. Known young for his writing, he failed the metropolitan examination repeatedly after refusing to attach himself to the senior grand secretary Zhang Juzheng, and only passed in 1583; he then served in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices in Nanjing and in the Ministry of Rites. In 1591 his memorial attacking the grand secretary Shen Shixing and the censors got him banished as a jail warden at Xuwen in Guangdong, and he later became magistrate of Suichang in Zhejiang. In 1598 he gave up office, returned to Linchuan and finished The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting) in his Yuming Hall; with The Purple Hairpin, The Southern Bough and The Handan Dream it makes up the Four Dreams of Linchuan. He died at home in 1616, the same year as Shakespeare. In chapter twenty-three of The Story of the Stone, Lin Daiyu is shaken on overhearing lines from The Peony Pavilion.
Life and times
Dates 1550 CE–1616 CE