The Swallow Letter

A swallow carries away a poem written by a young lady and drops it near a young scholar; a painting is mixed up with another; two girls who look alike change places. The Swallow Letter is a dazzling Ming comedy of errors. Its intricate plot, lyrical arias and lively comedy made it a sensation of the late Ming. This is a complete new English translation, with names in modern pinyin and the text rendered as plain, readable English prose. Stage directions and role names are kept, and the sung arias are rendered as verse, so the play can be read like a script or imagined on the stage. Chinese drama mixes speech, song, comedy and spectacle; the plays were performed for centuries, and their stories are still known to every Chinese reader.