The play moves in an atmosphere of strictly prescribed etiquette of which the mother is a stony-eyed incarnation. The facetious little maid is a breaker of rules in the interest of more human considerations, and, like the servant in all our comedies from the time of Menander downward, she tells her mistress some frank home-truths. Not only is the young man a scholar, but the heroine with her maid-companion also have been ardent students of the classics. Quotations from Confucius, Mencius, Laotze, and the Buddhist writings lend their sparkle to the dialogue. The lovers exchange poems exhibiting that charming impressionism of delicately sketched moonlight on the lotus or snowfall on pine trees so characteristic of Chinese verse. Allusions to myths abound; for example, to the moonlit cloud that wooed the mother of Huang Ti as Jupiter did Io. As in the plays of Bernard Shaw and of his predecessor Shakespeare, the heroine takes the initiative by tossing into the room of the rather passive hero a bag embroidered with characters revealing her love. A wistful note is sounded by the young scholar when the wedding commanded by the emperor is, as he believes, about to unite him to a woman other than the one he loves: “Musicians, please do not now play the air of the teals meeting in chaste pleasure who lament and yet feel no sorrow.” This speech gives the same blending of the emotions so often spoken of by our poets in analyzing the mystery of love, perhaps most strikingly in Goethe’s lines: _Freudvoll und leidvoll,_ _Gedankenvoll sein,_ _Langen und bangen_ _In schwebender Pein,_ _Himmelhoch jauchzend_, _Zum Tode betrübt,_ _Glücklich allein ist_ _Die Seele die liebt._