Faculty Publication: Associate Professor of East Asian Studies Shiamin Kwa
The Orphan of Zhao on the World Stage
Author: Shiamin Kwa
Source: Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature
Publication Type: Chapter in a book
Abstract: Ji Junxiang's The Orphan of Zhao was a zaju play written in China's Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). The play, about the series of sacrifices made and strategies devised in order to save the life of the last remaining member of the Zhao family, was preserved in a contemporary Yuan printing, and then later anthologized in the succeeding Ming dynasty. Adaptations of the play, or famous scenes from its plot, continued to be performed in China over the centuries and persist today. This chapter discusses the original play as well as its global spread once it became the first Chinese play to be translated into a European language in the early eighteenth century. Versions by Metastasio, Voltaire, and Arthur Murphy represent the influence of the Chinese play in Enlightenment Europe. The play continues to thrive in adaptations for film, book, and stage in the twenty‐first century.