"I Wondered If It Was My Old Friend Coming": Performing the Zhiyin Friendship in Tang Xianzu's The Purple Flute

This paper explores the representation of zhiyin 知音 friendship through the lenses of gender and performance in The Purple Flute ( Zixiao ji 紫簫記 ), Tang Xianzu ' s 湯顯祖 (1550 – 1616) first but unfinished attempt to write a play for the new southern theater. The zhiyin motif stands out as the intertext between the play and its source story , " The Tale of Huo Xiaoyu ," written in the ninth century. Not only does Tang Xianzu transform the female protagonist Huo Xiaoyu into a zhiyin figure in The Purple Flute, but he also presents a most poignant portrayal of female friendship among musicians and performers in late Ming literature. As musical experts, female entertainers in this play constantly promote new trends in singing and music making, bringing up notions such as " new voices " ( xinsheng 新聲 ) , " new renditions " ( xinfan 新翻 ) , " new transmission " ( xinchuan 新傳 ), and " new making " ( biezhi 別製 ), therefore acting as the mouthpieces of a young, daring, and experimental playwright. As often-alluded-to figures of nostalgia in earlier poetry, these characters are inevitably cast in sentimental entanglement with their past, pointing to the tension between the old and the new in music and theater practice. Their nostalgic songs not only solicit empathetic responses from each other but also call forth a zhiyin audience offstage. In other words, Tang maneuvers female musical voices to promote a new form of theater and to challenge the hierarchy between elite and popular lyrical traditions. By examining the intertextual meanings of zhiyin as embodied by and invested in the courtesan singers across generations in The Purple Flute, this study unravels Tang ' s intricate play with gender, art, and agency in his first ambitious engagement with the new southern theater .