The late 13th c. Chinese play The Record of the Chalk Circle (Huilanji) is famous because its main theme is the universal motif of the "Solomon's judgment"; in addition, it became known in the West in free adaptations by both Klabund and Brecht. The "Solomon's judgement" (in 1 Kings 3:16-28 of the Hebrew Bible) concerns a dispute between two women who claim the same child as their own, and the wise way in which this is resolved - in the Chinese play by the famous Judge Bao (Bao Zheng, 999-1062), a historical magistrate who demonstrated extreme uprightness and honesty, and who as the prefect of China's then capital Kaifeng initiated a number of changes to better hear the grievances of the people, which made him a legendary figure.
[Judge Bao as portrayed in the Peking Opera]
But as translators West and Idema point out in their introduction, The Chalk Circle is much more than just a play about a disputed child: it also shows the pressures of domestic life in China, in the scapegoating of a secondary wife, originally a prostitute, by a legitimate first wife, and it lays bare that commensurability between person and social place is often lacking (an important issue in a society where social hierarchies are presumably constructed from moral worth).
The plot is as follows:
A sixteen-year-old girl, Zhang Haitang, is after her father's death sold into a house of prostitution by her impoverished family. There she is befriended by Ma Junqing ("Magnate Ma"), a wealthy and childless tax collector, who takes her into his house as his second wife. She bears him a son, Shou'er, but earns the jealousy of his first wife. The first wife accuses Haitang of adultery, poisons her husband, blames Haitang for the crime; to the court she claims that Shou'er is her own child, so that she can inherit all of Ma's fortune. Haitang is arrested, and at the order of a corrupt judge beaten until she confesses (torture of suspects was normal in Chinese courts in the past). Haitang is then conveyed to the capital to have her death sentence confirmed, but happily her new judge is Bao Zheng who rescues her in a scene similar to the Judgment of Solomon: Shou'er is placed in a circle of chalk between the two women, and each is ordered to pull the child toward her; as Haitang can not bear to hurt her child, she gives in - and so is judged to be his true mother. The first wife and her lover who have falsely accused Haitang are punished by "death by slow slicing." Haitang inherits, on behalf of her son, the house and fortune of her deceased husband.
The play became first known in Europe in a French language translation by Stanislas Julien, published as Le Cercle de Craie (1832). This was adapted into German by Klabund as Der Kreidekreis in 1924. In Klabund's version, the Emperor marries the heroine at the end of the play, while in the original she returns to live with her brother, who has become a court official. Based on Klabund's play, the Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky wrote the opera Der Kreidekreis, which was first performed in Zurich in 1933.
Klabund's version was translated into English by James Laver as The Circle of Chalk (1929) and actually put on stage starring the American actress Anna May Wong. In 1940, Bertolt Brecht wrote Der Augsburger Kreidekreis, a short story based on Der Kreidekreis, which adapts the story by omitting the imperial intervention and making the first wife the biological mother, but having her abandon the child. The heroine is a serving girl who rescues and raises him, becoming the "real" mother. In 1944, he further reworked the story as the play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, moving the events to medieval Georgia, adding a prologue set in Soviet Georgia, and greatly elaborating the narrative. In other words, there are few other Chinese literary works which have had such a large influence on European literature.
About Li Xingdao (whose name also may have been Li Xingfu; Wikipedia gives "Li Qianfu" but that is incorrect) nothing further is known. The play probably dates from between the years 1264 and 1294.
I have read The Chalk Circle in the translation by Stephen West and Wilt Idema (Monks, Bandits, Lovers and Immortals, Eleven Early Chinese Plays. Hackett 2010)
Online version of Klabund's Kreidekreis. The Causacian Chalk Circle by Brecht is available in Nine Plays of the Modern Theatre, ed. Harold Clurman (Grove Press, 1981). Klabund adds his own poetry and some new scenes to the play, but doesn't move too far away from the original. It is a beautiful adaptation which deserves to be better known. I am not very enthusiastic about Brecht, as he changes the play too much by (uninteresting) additions and by relocating it to the Soviet Union.
Illustration from Wikimedia Commons
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