The Injustice to Dou E

Introduction

Guan Hanqing's Yuan zaju in a prologue and four acts, on Dou E's wrongful sentence and her three dying vows

The Injustice to Dou E, in full The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth, is the best-known play of the Yuan dramatist Guan Hanqing and draws on the folk tale of the filial widow of Donghai. The standard text has a prologue and four acts. In the prologue the young Dou E is handed over to the Cai family as a child bride; in the second act the villain Zhang Lü'er poisons his own father by mistake, blames Dou E, and she confesses under torture to spare her mother-in-law. The third act is the climax: before her execution she vows that her blood will fly up onto a white banner, that snow will fall in midsummer and that drought will last three years, and all three come true. In the fourth act her father, now an official, reopens the case and clears her name. Zang Maoxun's Ming anthology of Yuan plays fixed the text most readers know, and the story was later recast in Peking, Yu, Hebei bangzi, Cantonese and Ping opera, often under the title Snow in Midsummer. Wang Guowei judged that it could stand among the great tragedies of the world.