"Making History": Metatheatre in the Peach Blossom Fan

Abstract:This paper analyzes the historical drama The Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan, 1699) to provide new insight into how the medium of theater made history in early Qing China. The Peach Blossom Fan famously engages narratives of the Ming–Qing dynastic transition, which lasted for several decades after 1644. Previous scholarship has drawn attention to the ways in which the playwright Kong Shangren (1648–1718) uses historical detail, and how he frames historical events on stage. My article builds on this work to argue that in The Peach Blossom Fan, the theater conceptually shapes and intervenes in the historical process itself. I suggest that "history" is not a fixed entity that can be faithfully (re)presented on stage. Rather, The Peach Blossom Fan brings history into being by synthesizing the stories and memories of the Ming–Qing transition, thus valorizing stage performances as historical events, and revealing how theater can create history. Playwright Kong relies on techniques and strategies of metatheatre to explore the "making" of history—a term I use with reference to Michel de Certeau. The Peach Blossom Fan foregrounds performance conventions, such as references to characters' face paint, to pass judgment on its cast of late Ming characters. The play also juxtaposes distinct dramatic temporalities to cultivate its reading audience as witnesses to and judges of its story of dynastic transition. This paper will focus on selected episodes from the play, including the beating of late Ming playwright and politician Ruan Dacheng and the suicide of the Ming general Shi Kefa, to reveal how metatheatre embeds diverse modes of historical presentation and interpretation. The past, I show, becomes history through the process of theater.