In 1368 AD, Zhu Yuanzhang successively eliminated Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng and other separatist forces, and captured Dadu in the autumn of the same year, ending the rule of the Yuan Dynasty and establishing the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang saw from the fall of the Yuan Dynasty that in addition to the quality of the rulers themselves, the failure of the entire society to educate was also a reason. Therefore, in the second year after his accession to the throne, he decreed: "Every prefecture, prefecture, and county should set up schools, with the Zhou rites, the six virtues, the six elements, and the six arts as the main topics, and the rites should be extended to Confucianism, and the students should be taught to teach the students, and the holy way should be preached, so as to restore the rites of the kings and reform the habits of pollution.
The "gift of the first king" here essentially refers to a return to tradition. For Zhu Yuanzhang, he wanted to flourish the etiquette culture, that is, the "holy way", so at the beginning of the founding of the country, Confucian culture was restored and Han culture returned. The corresponding "polluting habits" refer to the bad customs inherited from the Yuan Dynasty, and these so-called "bad habits" also include the singing and acting behaviors that flourished in the Yuan Dynasty. For Zhu Yuanzhang, these were the factors that led to the eventual decline of the Yuan Dynasty, so he issued a very strict "entertainment restriction order" and must ban them.
"Yuan and Ming people are singing and dancing, not producing, Ming Taizu set up a high-rise building in the middle street, ordered the pawn to look at it, and heard the string song and drink the Bo, that is, tied to the upside down and hung upstairs, drinking water for three days and dying." This is a historical material about the ban on drama in the early Ming Dynasty recorded by Li Guangdi, an official of the Qing Dynasty, although it is unlikely to be true, but it also reflects the severity of the ban on drama in the early Ming Dynasty.
Because in Zhu Yuanzhang's heart, the sound of dogs and horses is the existence that makes the social atmosphere degenerate rapidly. In his dialogue with Zhan Tong, the secretary of the ministry, the evaluation of entertainment is that "sound and lust are the axe of sexuality, easy to drown people, once there is drowning, then disaster will follow, so it is harmful, more than poison", once people are contaminated with the hobby of sound and sex, it will soon be over.
What's even more terrifying is that Zhu Yuanzhang's view of entertainment has always been like this. Twenty years later, in March of the 22nd year of Hongwu (1389), an edict was issued to demand that the tongues of those who sang in Beijing Middle School be cut out; Those who play chess and play backgammon will cut off their hands; round, unloaded feet; Those who do business are sent to the border to fill the army. This punishment is also too harsh.
Of course, it's not that you can't act in any drama. The Ministry of Rites is responsible for the performance of various ceremonial occasions in the palace banquet and the court, with a large number of musicians and excellent singers, in response to them issued a ban to stipulate the content of the performance, Zhu Yuanzhang specially wrote a ban into the "Da Ming Law", and in the 30th year of Hongwu to improve the "Da Ming Law" when this provision was perfected: "All music people are not allowed to dress up the statues of emperors, queens, concubines, loyal ministers, martyrs, saints and sages of the past dynasties, and violators will be roded a hundred; The house of the government and the people, allowing the dresser to be guilty of the same crime; Its immortals pretend to be righteous and husbands, women, filial sons, and grandsons persuade others to be good, not in the forbidden limit", which actually set a benchmark for the national opera industry. To a certain extent, this also cuts off the demand for drama creation, which is an obstacle to the development of theater culture.
The reason why Zhu Yuanzhang is so strict with the management of opera and miscellaneous dramas is mainly out of consideration for his own dominance, but this kind of regulation itself is against human nature, but any normal person has a psychological need for entertainment. Could it be that humming two lines of music can destroy the country? The scholars of the Ming Dynasty did not believe in this. Therefore, after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the ban on opera basically became a blank sheet of paper, and no one paid attention to it. Even the emperor himself was addicted to opera and couldn't extricate himself. Ming Xianzong likes to listen to miscellaneous dramas and prose, and basically collects all the words of the whole country into the palace. Ming Wuzong also has the same hobby, he likes to listen to dramas and prose, and those who pay tribute to him can be richly rewarded. In order to satisfy the emperor's hobby, Xu Lin, Yang Xunji, Chen Fu and others paid tribute to no less than thousands of words. If Zhu Yuanzhang knew that his descendants would be slapped in the face like this, he would probably be so angry that he would sit up directly from the coffin.