The Injustice to Dou E

Dou E Yuan, commonly translated asThe Injustice to Dou E, and also known asSnow in Midsummer, is a Chinesezajuplay written byGuan Hanqing(c. 1241–1320) during theYuan dynasty. The full Chinese title of the play isGan Tian Dong Di Dou E Yuan, which roughly translates toThe Injustice to Dou E that Touched Heaven and Earth.
The story follows a child bride turned widow, Dou E, who is wrongly convicted of crimes by a corrupt court official for actions perpetrated by a rejected suitor, Zhang the mule. After her execution, three prophesied phenomena occur to prove her innocence, including blood raining from the sky, snow in June and a three-year drought. After a visit from the ghost of Dou E, her father eventually brings the corrupt court official, a doctor and Mule Zhang to justice, thereby vindicating his daughter.
Today, the phrase "snowing in June" is still widely used among Chinese speakers as a metaphor for a miscarriage of justice. The story has been repeatedly used and modified by later dramatists and remains one of Guan's most popular works.
Dou Duanyun, a young maiden from Chuzhou (楚州; present-dayHuai'an District,Huai'an,Jiangsu), is sold to the Cai family as achild bridebecause her father, Dou Tianzhang, owed large amounts of money and could not repay his debts. She is renamed 'Dou E'.
Dou E's husband died two years after their marriage, leaving behind Dou E and her mother-in-law to depend on each other. Dou E and her mother-in-law are bullied by Sai Lu Yi, an unscrupulous physician. Sai Lu Yi almost kills Dou's mother-in-law by strangling her. Dou E and her mother-in-law are saved by the hooligan Zhang Lü'er and his father. Zhang pretends to offer them "protection" and moves into their house against their will, and then tries to force Dou E to marry him but she refuses.
Dou E's mother-in-law has a sudden craving for soup. Zhang Lü'er plots to murder Dou E's mother-in-law so that he can seize Dou E for himself after the older woman dies. He blackmails Sai Lu Yi for poison by threatening to report the physician to the authorities for his earlier attempt to murder Dou E's mother-in-law. He puts the poison in the soup and hopes that Dou E's mother-in-law will drink it and die. However, Zhang's father drinks the soup instead and dies from poisoning. Zhang Lü'er then frames Dou E for murdering his father.
Dou E is arrested and brought before the prefecture governor, Tao Wu, who subjects her to various tortures to force her to confess to the crime. Then Tao Wu threatens Dou E by torturing her mother-in-law. Dou E does not want her mother-in-law to be implicated so she admits to the murder. Tao Wu sentences her to death by beheading.
Dou E is brought to the execution ground. Before her execution, she swears that her innocence will be proven if the following three events occur after she dies:
All three events happened after Dou E's death.
Three years later, Dou E's ghost appears before her father, Dou Tianzhang, who has become alianfangshi(廉訪使; a senior government official) in theAnhuiandJiangsuregion, and tells him all her grievances. Dou Tianzhang orders a reinvestigation of the case and the truth finally comes to light. Dou E is posthumously proclaimed innocent while the guilty parties receive their due punishments: Sai Lu Yi is exiled to a distant land; Tao Wu is dismissed and barred from entering office again; Zhang Lü'er is given the death penalty.
Dou E also wishes that her father can allow her mother-in-law to live with him, and that he will help to take care of her mother-in-law. Dou E's father agrees. The play ends here.
The scholarStephen H. Westnotes that the texts ofYuan dramawere edited and "extensively altered" byZang Maoxun(1550–1620), whoseYuanqu xuan(元曲選) became the standard anthology. Zang rationalised both the language and the format of the plays he edited, rather than the "coarser and more rugged – sometimes ragged – registers of language found in the early commercial editions of Yuan drama."
Almost all English translations before those in the anthology by West and Idema were based on Zang's recensions.David Rolstonremarks that "West and Idema are clearly very interested in the levels of language in the plays they translate (their translations do not shy from highlighting the rawer or racier elements of plays in ways generally ignored or suppressed by other translators)." Their translations, he says, will be more useful to those who are interested in the history of the theater and the plays, while the emphasis on readability in translations based on Zang's texts, such as that by George Kao in theColumbia Anthology, will be more appealing to general readers.
The play has been adapted intokunqu,as well as a 1956Cantonese opera,The Summer Snow, bylibrettistTang Ti-sheng.
Modern versions include the co-composition ofChen ZiandDu Yuin the 1960s, and Taiwanese composerMa Shui-Long's 1990 version.
A contemporary reimagining of the play was staged in 2017 by theRoyal Shakespeare Company. The play was directed by Justin Audibert, translated by Gigi Chang, and specially adapted by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig.It premiered in the US at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018.
The play has been adapted into films and television series:
It is also at the centre of the plot of a 2023 Malaysian film,Snow in Midsummer.
Translations can be found in the following volumes: