Yuan Drama Yuán Cháo Zájù 元朝杂剧
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◀ Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi Comprehensive index starts in volume 5, page 2667. Yuan Drama Yuán Cháo zájù 元朝杂剧 Growing out of a largely anonymous perfor- as early as the first half of the fourteenth century, thus mance and ritual tradition of the Song and Jin providing us with some of the earliest texts in the Asian periods, Yuan drama matured into a recog- theatrical repertoire. nizable artistic form. During this first golden age of Chinese song-drama (1279– 1368), indi- vidual actresses and actors, playwrights, and History of the Form critics perfected performance conventions, All the impressive firsts of Yuan dynastyzaju notwithstand- scripts, and aesthetic criteria. ing, zaju evolved over the course of at least two hundred years before becoming a literary medium for playwrights and a star vehicle for performers. In the mid-twelfth cen- he Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) is generally regarded tury contemporary observers reminisced about the large as the first golden age of traditional Chinese song- commercial theaters operating in the capital of the North- drama, particularly with regard to the theatrical ern Song dynasty (960–1126), Kaifeng (modern Kaifeng), form commonly known as “Northern-style zaju drama.” where comic duos (fumo and fujing) together with a lead- Drama became significant enough as an aesthetic form ing man (moni) and an official (zhuanggu) role type offered for urban communities and their participants—authors, humorous fare then known as “variety plays” (zaju). These performers, critics, patrons—to acknowledge their con- same diarists also mentioned that various entertainments tributions to the world of theater. The names of approxi- were enacted on permanent open-air stages attached to mately one hundred zaju authors and the titles of more temples as well as on temporary stages erected for par- than six hundred plays attributed to them are known to ticular holidays. In the context of a Buddhist-inspired All us today. Similarly, the names, and in some rare cases the Souls Festival the title of a particular zaju play, the Bud- likenesses of individual zaju actors and actresses, have dhist salvation story of Mulian Rescues His Mother [from been transmitted through visual, poetic, and documen- Hell], first appeared. The tale was subsequently adopted tary sources produced by patrons, scholar-officials, other into the Yuan zaju repertoire and remains a staple of cer- playwrights, and drama connoisseurs. In addition, a num- tain regional operas to this day. ber of critics developed explicit formal criteria to evaluate When in the 1130s the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1125–1234) the authors, the performers, and the stylistic character- assumed control over the heartland of early zaju perfor- istics of song-drama as well as the musically related form mances (modern-day Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi prov- known as sanqu songs. Finally, the libretti of at least thirty inces), the development of zaju continued unabated, partly zaju song-dramas were considered aesthetically impor- because Jurchens had a strong song-and-dance tradition tant and linguistically demanding enough to be printed of their own and partly because the Jin court selectively 2594 T © 2009 by Berkshire Publishing Group LLC Yuan Drama n Yuán Cháo zájù n 元朝杂剧 2595 The last section from the Yuan drama The Story of the Western Wing, by playwright Wang Shi fu. Calligraphy by Wang Cheng (1494– 1533). adopted Song institutions as well as Chinese literary cul- “All Keys and Modes” (zhugongdiao) coincided with the ture more generally. Not only do later lists of comic skits final stage of the maturation of Yuan drama. Rather than about everyday life and of stories about historical figures, simply repeating identical tunes patterns, “All Keys and romance, and religions suggest a rich urban repertoire Modes” welded together several melodies into song-sets, performed in the new capital of Yanjing (present- day Bei- a feature that would be developed into song-suites set to jing), but also Jin dynasty stages found in smaller towns different musical modes in Yuan zaju plays. around Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi provinces suggest The Mongol defeat of the Jin in 1233 and of the South- that zaju performance was a common feature of rural life. ern Song dynasty (1127– 1279) did not disrupt but rather Furthermore, judging both from extant stages and from furthered the evolution of song-drama in the old capi- the replicas of stages and performers unearthed from Jin tals as well as the hinterland. The new Yuan capital, Dadu dynasty tombs, conventions of zaju performance were (modern Beijing), was located in the same city as the Ju- moving toward a specialized theatrical stage and the rchen capital of Yanjing. Not surprisingly perhaps, Dadu role system of a main female or male lead (zhengdan and was the initial urban epicenter of the synthesis of the the- zhengmo), both of which would become hallmarks of ma- atrical, musical, and authorial developments begun under ture Yuan drama. Moreover, the popularity of the musi- the Song and the Jin dynasties. Most of the early drama- cally innovative Jin dynasty chantefable genre known as tists hailed from Dadu, including the reputed progenitor © 2009 by Berkshire Publishing Group LLC 2596 Berkshire Encyclopedia of China 宝 库 山 中 华 全 书 of the genre of Yuan zaju, Guan Hanqing. However, the such as the cross-culturally famous The Orphan of the move of the Song court to Lin’an (modern-day Hang- House of Zhao (Zhaoshi gu’er), Yuan zaju were comprised zhou), the capital of the Southern Song dynasty, had of five rather than the standard four acts. With five books helped old-style zaju find a new home in the south in the consisting of four acts each, the famous love comedy The 1100s, and hence mature Yuan zaju quickly took hold in Story of the Western Wing (Xixiang ji) adhered to the con- the former Southern Song capital as well, with many of ventions of both the short zaju and the much longer ch- the later Yuan dramatists such as Zheng Guangzu being uanqi form. In general, each song-suite accommodated active in Hangzhou. different sets of melodies, which were said to have con- noted different emotive timbres. All songs were sung by a single role type, the main female (zhengdan) or male lead Form of Yuan Zaju (zhengmo), the story’s central locus of emotion. In most Song- Drama cases a single character occupied that role type, but in rare instances two characters assumed the role of the singing In its mature form Yuan zaju typically consisted of a me- lead. In the exceptional The Story of the Western Wing, a lodic sequence of songs set to different musical modes, set of four acts was principally sung by the same role, but which musically delineated four distinct acts. Occasion- the lead role varied across the five books of the play. ally the four-act format was expanded with short melodic The arias alternated with dialogue spoken by all par- prologues or interludes known as “wedges.” In rare cases ties. The language of the arias blended both classical Illustration for The Story of the Western Wing, a Yuan period play. Ink and color on silk, by Qiu Ying (active painter c. 1522– 1560). © 2009 by Berkshire Publishing Group LLC Yuan Drama n Yuán Cháo zájù n 元朝杂剧 2597 allusions and colloquial elements, which earned the genre Coquette (Jiufengchen). In the Yuan dynasty other play- the characterization of “being neither excessively formal wrights adopted the nicknames “Little Hanqing” and nor vulgar” (buwen busu). In Yuan-printed texts the dia- “Southern Hanqing,” attesting to Guan Hanqing’s stand- logue was sketchy rather than fully elaborated, implying ing as Yuan zaju’s foundational author. In the twentieth that performers may have improvised those segments or century The Injustice to Dou E (Dou E yuan) was singled that audiences needed no reading aids to follow the spo- out and came to exemplify Guan’s excellence as a writer ken parts. By contrast, extant Ming dynasty (1368– 1644) of the then newly sinicized genre of tragedy. versions of Yuan drama greatly expanded the dialogue Pai Pu (1226–c. 1280) ranked among the few known and added set poetic recitation pieces. In Selections of literati authors of Yuan drama. Hailing from Shanxi Prov- Yuan Plays (Yuanqu xuan, also known as One Hundred ince, Pai Pu’s father, Bai Hua, had passed the highest ex- Yuan Plays, Yuanren baizhong qu, 1615/16), Zang Maoxun aminations during the Jin dynasty, an honor that earned (1550– 1620) fleshed out the dialogue and edited the arias him a biography in the officialHistory of the Jin. After the to create the definitive reading text for “Yuan drama.” fall of the dynasty the family fell on hard times but even- Cleverly claiming that the Yuan court selected the highest tually settled in Nanjing. Bai’s song lyrics alluded to his echelon of examination candidates through the writing of longing for the old dynasty; given the extant attributions, arias, Zang provided a new sheen of literary respectability his plays for the most part dealt with romance. Most fa- for song-drama in general. mous among these was Rain on the Pawlownia Tree (Wu- tongyu), one of the few extant song-dramas that survived the Ming dynasty prohibition on the imperial figures in Authors and Themes zaju texts and performance. Rain empathetically told the well-known story of Tang emperor Xuanzong’s loss of his The bulk of individually attributable Chinese literature favorite consort, Yang Guifei, to political necessity from written prior to the Yuan dynasty originated with scholar- the point of view of the heartbroken emperor. officials or aristocrats. By contrast, Yuan zaju was the A native of Dadu, Ma Zhiyuan, may have served as a first major body of Chinese texts to have been primarily minor functionary, according to one source, but accord- written by relatively well-educated professional authors.