"Women in Traditional Chinese Theater seeks to introduce Western readers to Chinese classical drama as well as investigate how women have traditionally been portrayed on stage by presenting original translations of six plays from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Framed with a comprehensive introduction to the Chinese theater and its representation of women, each play is preceded by an interpretative summary of the plot, and an analysis of each play's theme and significance. The selections in this volume feature women representing the most popular female archetypes in Chinese literature: the paragon of virtue, the stoic sufferer, the faithful wife, the femme fatale, and others. Appealing to both scholars and general enthusiasts of theater, literature, and women's studies, this book reveals how the cultural constructs of Chinese women are represented in dramatic literature, and how the theater, in turn, shapes this representation into the cultural perception of women."--BOOK JACKET.