¹ Kunju (or Kun play) has also been known as Kunqu (or Kun melody). Kunju is a more accurate term to describe the theatrical form. The later use of Kunqu may itself be evidence of continuing interest in the music when the theatrical form itself had gone into decline.

² Qiuyu, Yu, A Historical Survey of Chinese Theatrical Culture (Zhongguo xiju wenhua shi shu) (Hunan, 1985), p. 370.Google Scholar

³ Other genres developed similar groups of singing parts each with its own character types and sub-types. In Kunju there are five different sub-types of sheng: daguan sheng, senior official; xiaoguan sheng, junior official; jin sheng, young scholar (literally a young man wearing a scholar's scarf); xiepi sheng, poor and unconventional young man, and finally chiwei sheng, martial young man, who always wears a pair of feathers to symbolize his military profession. These five types of sheng follow different stage conventions each with its own distinctive characteristics. Sometimes one character in a play may need to be performed by two separate actors using the stage conventions of two different character types, for instance, if the character's circumstances undergo a change, e.g. from a young scholar to a high-ranking official. The later Peking Opera did not have this range of distinctions within its character types.

⁴ This feature can be traced to the idea of rites, part of the concept of li in Confucianism. Confucius advocated rites and used the perfect virtue of love, or ren, to explain them and also tried to make rites more acceptable to ordinary people. Ritual was associated with music. The later Confucian scholars further developed this idea. For instance, Dong Zhongshu (C.179–C. 104) said: ‘Heaven, Earth, and man are the origin of all things. Heaven gives them birth, Earth nourishes them, and man perfects them. Heaven gives them birth by (instilling) filial piety and respect for elders; Earth nourishes them by (supplying) clothing and food; man perfects them by (creating) ritual (li) and music (yue). These three are to each other like the hands and feet, which, united, give the finished physical form, so that none may be dispensed with. […] To do without ritual and music would be to destroy that whereby they are perfected.’ Yu-Ian, Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk, Bodde, 2 Vols (Princeton, 1953), II, p. 32.Google Scholar In ancient Greece, theatrical elements were dissociated from rites and rapidly became drama. In China, on the contrary, the theatrical elements expanded with the spreading of rites as they penetrated more and more deeply into daily life. When Chinese drama finally became a mature form (around the beginning of the twelfth century), it was as a form of entertainment for special occasions: weddings, funerals, festivals, banquets, and so on. People could appreciated a performance casually, chatting and eating. See Qiuyu, Yu, A Historical Survey of Chinese Theatrical Culture (Zhongguo xiju wenhua shi shu) (Hunan, 1985), p. 32.Google Scholar

⁵ Eting, Lu, The History of Kunju in Performance (Kunju yanchu shi gao), (Shanghai, 1980), p. 134.Google Scholar

⁶ Lu Eting, p. 175.

⁷ The text of Macbeth quoted in this article is The Arden Shakespeare.

⁸ In China, women used to take their husbands' family names and dropped their own personal names when they married. The pattern of the new name would be: husband's family name, wife's maiden name and shi, which means ‘the person of those two families’. In Blood-Stained Hands, Tie is Ma Pei's wife's maiden name, and means ‘iron’.

⁹ The dragon symbolizes the emperor's power and the tiger is the king of the animals.

¹⁰ Shi, Tie in Blood-Stained HandsGoogle Scholar has a dream the night before her husband comes back from the battle, in which she sees a tiger sitting in the dragon imperial bed. She uses this dream to encourage Ma Pei to usurp imperial power.

¹¹ Ji Zhenhua attended the Shanghai Traditional Chinese Drama School (Shanghaishi Xiqu Xuexiao) and became a student in the Kunju class when he was ten. He spent seven years in the school and has worked in Shanghai Kunju Troupe ever since he graduated.

¹² Traditionally, the colour of the apricot and the pattern of the dragon can only be used by the emperor.

¹³ In Chinese superstition, a ghost may attach itself to someone and enter that person so that he or she takes on the person of the ghost. In this case Ma Pei thinks each official, when ‘entered’ by the ghost, is in fact Du Ge's ghost.

¹⁴ King, Francis, ‘Strange union of farce and tragedy’, Sunday Times, 30 August, 1987.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Crouching steps are a specific stage convention for the martial clown.

¹⁶ ‘The Encounter of Western and Chinese Culture on the Theatre Stage — a Dialogue about Traditional Chinese Drama and Shakespeare’ (‘Zhongxi wenhua zai xiju wutaishang de yuhe — guanyu “Zhongguo xiqu yu Shashibiya” de duihua’) The Dramatic Art (Xiju yishu), 3 (Shanghai, 1986), p. 42.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Du Ge does not hear anything the witches say, although he is with Ma Pei. And the prohecy that Banquo's heir will become King has been cut.

¹⁸ Coleridge argues that the murder has been discussed before the opening of the play. Of Macbeth's feeling after he has seen the witches, he writes: ‘But Macbeth, lost in thought, rouses himself to speech only by their being about to depart: “stay, you imperfect speakers”, and all that follows is reasoning on a hope which he welcomes, and the doubts concerning its attainment he wishes to have cleared up.’ , Coleridge, Coleridge's Criticism of Shakespeare, A Selection, edited by Foakes, R. A. (The Athlone Press, 1989) p. 107.Google Scholar ‘A much larger number would say that he had already harboured a vaguely guilty ambition, though he had not faced the idea of murder. And I think there can be no doubt that this is the obvious and natural interpretation of the scene. Only it is almost necessary to go rather further, and to suppose that his guilty ambition, whatever its precise form, was known to his wife and shared by her. Otherwise, surely, she would not, on reading his letter, so instantaneously assume that the King must be murdered in their castle; nor would Macbeth, as soon as he meets her, be aware (as he evidently is) that this thought is in her mind.’ Bradley, , Shakespearean Tragedy (Macmillan, 1979), p. 413.Google Scholar

¹⁹ We should distinguish ‘justice’ in Shakespeare from justice in traditional Chinese drama. In the latter, final happiness and misery are in proportion to virtue or merit. In traditional Chinese tragedies, when virtuous people die, either they become ghosts to punish the evil, or their heirs will take revenge. In the case of lovers who have been separated, they turn into flowers, trees or butterflies united for all time.

²⁰ Title equivalent to the Thane of Cawdor.

²¹ This is an obvious pun, with ‘Tie’ in Tie Shi meaning ‘iron’.