原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
做了和尚 We Have Become Monks
正慌忙處，只見那六院嬪妃、宮娥綵女、大小太監，皆光著頭跪下道：「主公，我們做了和尚耶。」正慌忙处，只见那六院嫔妃、宫娥彩女、大小太监，皆光着头跪下道：「主公，我们做了和尚耶。」
逐句解 Line by line
正慌忙處，只見那六院嬪妃、宮娥綵女、大小太監，皆光著頭跪下道：「主公，我們做了和尚耶。」
正慌忙处，只见那六院嫔妃、宫娥彩女、大小太监，皆光着头跪下道：「主公，我们做了和尚耶。」
In the middle of the panic, in came the concubines of the six courts, the palace maids and waiting-women, the eunuchs great and small, all of them bare-headed, who knelt and said: "Your Majesty, we have become monks."
光著頭 is bare-headed with 著 as zhe, a state held. And the last five characters are the line the whole chapter has been built to deliver: we have become monks. Said by the household of a king who has killed nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six of them, on their knees, as a confession.
Thirty-five characters and the joke lands perfectly. They kneel to report a crime and the crime is that they have accidentally become the thing their master executes.
Nobody in the room can do anything about it. A shaved head grows back in months, and the vow has two years and four monks left to run.