Imagning China with Timothy Billings Part 4

Question and Answer

Q: You have said there are lots of excellent illustrations in China illustrata. Are we going to see them on the Folger Website?
A: Some are on the wall throughout this exhibit and on the Title cards for each case. Others will appear in the next Folger magazine.

Q: Your enthusiasm in contagious. Can you tell us how you got interested in this subject?

A: When he was about 6 years old, his mother took him to see the Zeffirelli movie version of Romeo and Juliet. He knew he wanted to be a part of that. His father was an architect who designed the indoor theater for the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. So they lived out there and attended the Festival every year. He went to Taiwan for a year to study; there was a girl involved.
Then at Cornell he studied with Scott MacMillen, the great Shakespeare scholar. He felt that he had to choose between his two interests, WS and China; then discovered, maybe not. So it led to things like this exhibition. The FSL has a lot of material about the Early Modern European’s view of China, but it is not well known When Tim presented this idea to Gail Paster, her response was “Do we have any?”

Q: Is there any reference to China in Shakespeare?
A: Only one, in Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene 1 , Pompey is giving a long discursive answer to a question and includes “they are not China dishes, but very good dishes,” WS didn’t take any of his sources from China; he gets a lot from the Bible, from Plutarch, a completely different set of texts. He does use the word “Cathayan” to mean a liar. In this context, a “Cathayan” is a European traveler who has returned from China. Their unbelievable stories led to the general use of the word for someone who stretched the truth.

Q: When did the Chinese first learn about WS?
A: In the late 19th century, in connection with the Opium Wars, there was a transfer of history books into China. WS showed up in the context of history. As far back as the early 16th century, some Chinese went back to Europe with merchants, but most did not leave written accounts. There was one who lived in Paris and died apparently of heartbreak at being isolated from his country. He seemed to be of a melancholic disposition; it is a mistake to consider an individual as representing his whole culture; he is himself.

Chinese Dynasties

Han Dynasty, 202 BCE through 220 CE
Jin Dynasty, 266 through 420 CE
Tang Dynasty, 618-907 CE
Yuan Dynasty, 1271-1368 CE, an occupying dynasty of Mongols
Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644 CE
Qing Dynasty (pronounced “Chin”), 1644-1911, a Manchu dynasty

Books Available at the Shop
Vermeer’s Hat: the Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook
Chinese Shakespeares by Alexander Huang, the Video Curator
On Friendship---One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince by Matteo Ricci, translated and
introduction provided by Timothy Billings, the Exhibit Curator

Another Recommended Book
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan Spence, out of print, but recommended byJennifer Newton and endorsed by curator