ChineDrama
jukuI T is the opinion of modern scholars that drama was not native
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negiesto China, but was introduced, probably in rather an advanced state, by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. During the one-hundred and sixty-eight years of the Kin and Yuen dynasties the most celebrated plays were written. A famous collection known as the Hundred Plays of the Yuen Dynasty is prerved, and the titles of about six-hundred others are known, as well as the names of eighty-five playwrights. Three of the authors were women belonging to a class similar to the Greek heter?. During this period (1200-1368) the style of acting, the subjects to be treated, and the general conduct of the theater were determined. The Chine stage at the beginning of the twentieth century was practically the same as that of ven hundred years ago.
candy manTheory of Chine drama. The ideal of the Chine stage was that every play should have a moral. An article in the penal code of the Empire requires every dramatist to have "a virtuous aim." Both pro and ver are often ud in the same play. The best plots sat好听的英文歌推荐
isfy the rule regarding unity of action, and many of them also obrve the unities of time and place, although the Chine knew nothing of Aristotle's theories concerning the elements of structure. Many of the plays are short, a half-hour or so in length; and the longer ones are divided into acts and scenes. It is the custom in many places to give a ries of short plays without any intermission, so that a performance sometimes lasts for veral hours. In such a ca of cour there is no attempt at maintaining a single unified action. The cond play may take up the career of a new hero after the first one has been killed or defeated, thus carrying the spectator over long distances and through many years. In order to keep the thread of the action clear, each important character paus occasionally to announce his name and lineage, and perhaps to rehear the cour of the plot. A singular feature of the Chine play is the singing actor, to whom are given the most poetic and beautiful passages. Like the Greek
chorus, he sometimes repeats the chief events of the play, and moralizes upon the conduct of the characters.
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Subjects of Chine Drama. The field of the Chine playwright is broad, as he has a choice of historical or contemporary affairs from which to draw his plots. He may portray parental or filial goodness, national vices and weakness, official corruption, difficulties and delays connected with the law courts, and the absurdities into which religious fanatics are drawn. Love stories are comparatively rare. National customs, such as arranging marriage through an agent and determining official rank by means of examination, are inexhaustible sources of comic action. Avarice is often ridiculed. There are burlesques on Buddhism, a religion to which nearly four-fifths of the nation subscribe. No class or ction is exempt from the laughter of the stage. As the gods often intervene in Greek plays, so in a Chine play the Emperor often saves the heroine from an unfortunate marriage, or an innocent victim from death. It is technically illegal, however, to reprent the person of the Emperor on the stage.
One of the most revolting features of Chine drama is the frequent reprentation of scenes of violence. Suffering and death by starvation, drowning, poison, flogging, hanging, and torture have been exhibited for centuries, and it is the distinction of many a f少儿英语加盟教育项目
windyamous actor that he can most vividly depict the inten sufferings incident to the punishments. Suicide is a custom honored in China, and therefore often en on the stage. When an actor is about to kill himlf, he sings a long chant before committing the deed; but whatever disasters occur, the end must be happy.
In general, Chine drama is comparatively weak in the logical development of plot and in the delineation of character. Great stress, however, is laid upon verbal decoration and poetical ornament. There are pleasing contrasts between parallel scenes, and parallelism of language, as in the Psalms. In many passages
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a single word is played with, compounds being made upon the root, so that a speech in prai of a flower or of a royal person becomes an intricate linguistic labyrinth, like an English acrostic or anagram.
产生英文The Chine stage usually has little scenery, no curtain, flies, or wings. The costumes of the actors are gorgeous and costly, of brocade or heavy silk, often embroidered and t with
mi-precious stones. If, in the cour of a performance, an actor has to travel to another country, he goes through the motions of cantering for a few paces, cracks his whip, dismounts, and announces: "I have now reached the country of So-and-So." A property man in ordinary dress, regarded as "honorably invisible" by everybody, remains on the stage all the time, providing articles needed by the actors. The latter have their tea on the stage; and dead men ri and walk away when their scene is ended.
