in person at the subsequent judicial enquiry.[45]
Certain peculiarities in the conduct of the business are due to the
usages of society rather than to dramaturgic laws. Marriages are
generally managed--at least in the higher spheres of society--by ladies
professionally employed as matrimonial agents.[46] The happy resolution
of the _nodus_ of the action is usually brought about by the direct
interposition of superior official authority[47]--a tribute to the
paternal system of government, which is the characteristic Chinese
variety of the _deus ex machina_. This naturally tends to the favourite
close of a glorification of the emperor,[48] resembling that of Louis
XIV. at the end of _Tartufe_, or in spirit, at all events, those of the
virgin queen in more than one Elizabethan play. It should be added that
the characters save the necessity for a bill of the play by persistently
announcing and re-announcing their names and genealogies, and the
necessity for a book by frequently recapitulating the previous course of
the plot.

The principal personage who sings.

Poetic diction.

One peculiarity of the Chinese drama remains to be noticed. The chief
character of a play represents the author as well as the personage; he
or she is hero or heroine and chorus in one. This is brought about by
the hero's (or heroine's) _singing_ the poetical passages, or those
containing maxims of wisdom and morality, or reminiscences and examples
drawn from legend or history. Arising out of the dialogue, these
passages at the same time diversify it, and give to it such elevation
and brilliancy as it can boast. The singing character must be the
principal personage in the action, but may be taken from any class of
society. If this personage dies in the course of the play, another sings
in his place. From the mention of this distinctive feature of the
Chinese drama it will be obvious how unfair it would be to judge of any
of its productions, without a due appreciation of the lyric passages,
which do not appear to be altogether restricted to the singing of the
principal personage, for other characters frequently "recite verses." In
these lyrical or didactic passages are to be sought those flowers of
diction which, as Julien has shown, consist partly in the use of a
metaphorical phraseology of infinite nicety in its variations--such as a
long series of phrases compounded with the word signifying _jet_ and
expressing severally the ideas of rarit