In the rapidly expanding literature on Chinese drama, Shiamin Kwa's Strange Eventful Histories represents a welcome addition to the growing corpus of translations. More specifically, in concentrating on a group of late Ming zaju, Histories adds a new genre to the existing range of available plays published in English beyond the Yuan zaju and Ming chuanqi tackled by an earlier generation of scholars. Furthermore, in honing in on Xu Wei's quartet, Histories not only introduces a seminal group of Ming zaju, but also allows the reader to follow the dramatic development of one of the most idiosyncratic, versatile, and controversial literati of the sixteenth century.

In the first half of the book, Kwa offers a succinct introduction to the author, Xu Wei (1521–93), and to the genre of Ming zaju with a view toward isolating the universal concerns that transcend the late Ming moment: How does a person know another? How can what one says affect how one is understood? How does clothing, or the removal of clothing, reveal who one is? In Kwa's view, the plays explore conflicts between a real self and a performed self without denigrating the impersonation, while still retaining the notion of a stable self hidden beneath costume, makeup, and social roles (p. 109). Hence, each of the main protagonists embodies a divided self, foregrounding the strangeness of a single body containing multiple selves (p. 95). Kwa suggests that for Xu Wei, known to favor improvisation over mere imitation in the realm of painting, social impersonation represented a form of knowing another person (p. 108).

Kwa proceeds to develop these questions of social identity in separate chapters devoted to each of the four short plays—The Mad Drummer Plays the Yuyang Triple Rolls (Mi Heng), Zen Master Yu Has a Dream of Cuixiang, The Female Mulan Goes to War in Place of Her Father, and The Girl Graduate Rejects the Female Phoenix and Gains the Male Phoenix. The chapters identify literary antecedents of these tales and probe Xu Wei's versions of these famous stories through close readings of different plot elements. Particular emphasis is given to how the donning and removal of clothes shapes the self-understanding and the social identity of the protagonists. While the plays retain the conceit of a single main singer inherited from the Northern zaju form, they break new ground in how self-consciously they position the main lead in between two social identities. Rather than a simple ancillary expedient of the plot, the disguise speaks to an inherent aspect of the self of the protagonist. Thus, more so than the action-driven plots of the Yuan or the morality tales of Ming chuanqi, Xu Wei's plays hone in on the idea of impersonation as a form of self-expression. While none of the plays revolves around a play-within-a-play—that particular formation would only come into its own in the seventeenth century—we nevertheless sense a heightened awareness in probing the plausibility of alternate and often transgressive social roles. While the plays present such roles as temporary, they nevertheless invariably lead to happy endings, be that to a proposed correction of the Confucian historical record (Mi Heng), a recalibration of earthly attachments (Zen Master Yu), or happy marriage matches between equals (Mulan and Girl Graduate).

While sharing the focus on impersonation, the themes of Xu Wei's quartet are rather wide ranging. In Mi Heng, the central conflict revolves around the insubordination of Mi Heng vis-à-vis Cao Cao in a drum performance restaged for the benefit of the officials of the underworld. Hence, we are prompted to wonder: Is Cao Cao a military genius or a ruthless tyrant? Is Mi Heng a crass and deranged madman or does he dare to speak truth to power? In Zen Master Yu, a Buddhist master is seduced by a courtesan, which raises the question of whether or not he is a fraud or a genuine devotee. Interestingly, what he intends as an act of revenge instead becomes the occasion for his own spiritual advancement. Thus, we may find Zen Master Yu wanting in his simultaneous lapses from chastity and compassion, but in the end, flawed as he may be, he is nevertheless able to gain further attainment thanks to his dharma brother Brother Moonlight. In Mulan and the Girl Graduate, two young women excel at the martial and literary arts respectively; in both cases, the self-induced revelation of their original gender results in superior marriage matches. So are they talented women, honorary men, or devoted wives? The plays seem to revel in dwelling on their skills, while also underscoring their wifely virtues.

Despite the fact that they are relegated to the “appendices,” the complete translations of the four plays, together with the copious annotations, represent the core of the book. Basing itself on modern annotated editions and xylographic editions, Histories opts for faithful, at times somewhat literal, renderings of the poetry of Xu Wei's songs. On occasion, one wishes for slightly greater fluidity in order to make the sung nature of the text come alive. For instance, perhaps the “meaningless syllable” yeme could have been rendered with an English equivalent “to create the rhythm of the song” (p. 149) rather than being retained as an untranslated filler word in Chinese. The numerous annotations fall into two categories, namely literary allusions to a range of earlier texts and general cultural explanations for nonspecialists. Taken together, the apparatus may well make the plays suitable for the undergraduate classroom. Altogether, we are fortunate to count Strange Eventful Histories among the increasing number of texts that allow us to gain a fuller picture of the richness and diversity of the late imperial Chinese world of theater.