Autumn in the Han Palace

Introduction

Ma Zhiyuan's Yuan zaju sung by Emperor Yuan's role, ending in his longing at a lone goose's cry

Autumn in the Han Palace, in full Breaking a Troubling Dream: A Lone Goose in Autumn over the Palaces of Han, is the best-known zaju of the Yuan playwright Ma Zhiyuan, and the standard text has a prologue and four acts. The lead male role plays Emperor Yuan of Han, the lead female role plays Wang Zhaojun, and a painted-face role plays the court painter Mao Yanshou. The main line follows the histories of the Han, which record Zhaojun's marriage to the Xiongnu ruler, while Mao's demand for a bribe and his spoiled portrait of her are the playwright's invention. In the third act Zhaojun throws herself into the Black River at the border, and in the fourth the emperor dreams of her return until the cry of a lone wild goose wakes him on an autumn night. The play was included in Zang Maoxun's Ming anthology of Yuan drama and is often counted among the finest works of the form. John Francis Davis translated it into English as The Sorrows of Han, published in London in 1829.