Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play, translated and introduced by Regina S. Llamas, is another English translation of nanxi 南戲, or Southern Play, after The Lute: Kao Ming's P'i-p'a chi (1980). Unlike zaju 雜劇, or Yuan drama, and chuanqi 傳奇, or Ming drama, which have had a good number of English translations of their representative works and studies of their famous playwrights, such as Guan Hanqing 關漢卿 (ca. 1241–1320), Wang Shifu 王實甫 (ca. 1250–1337), Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616), and Li Yu 李漁 (1611–1680), nanxi is much less known and studied in the English-speaking world. The term nanxi may surface as the predecessor of chuanqi in general histories of Chinese drama, or may be mentioned in discussions of Gao Ming's 高明 (ca. 1305–ca. 1371) Pipa ji 琵琶記;1 however, the scarceness of translated nanxi texts makes its thematic focuses, artistic forms, and dramatic conventions rather obscure...
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