The history of the development of drama in China can be traced back to the Northern Song Dynasty, when there were Already Song miscellaneous dramas with dramatic forms. However, judging from the existing scripts of some Song miscellaneous dramas, their plots are not mature and do not meet the standards of the script.
Therefore, the earliest drama in China is the Song and Yuan Southern Drama of the late Song and early Yuan Dynasties.
The so-called "Southern Opera", as the name suggests, is a form of drama that originated in the South, and was also called "Drama Text" by the people of the time. The earliest documented southern opera was born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, and the locals called it "Yongjia Miscellaneous Opera".
Located on the south bank of the Ou River, it is a city with abundant products and convenient transportation, and the climate and scenery here are pleasant, so it became the temporary capital of the exile regime of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Although the Southern Song Dynasty court did not have a long foothold in Wenzhou and failed to build the city into a political and economic hub of the country, it also made Wenzhou once a center of Southern Song culture and provided a hotbed for the development of Southern Opera in the Song and Yuan Dynasties.
The Ming Dynasty Xu Wei mentioned in the "Narrative of Southern Words": "Yongjia miscellaneous drama Xing, that is, the village square small song and for it." It can be seen that the birth of the Southern Opera of the Song and Yuan Dynasties is similar to the local opera of the Qing Dynasty in later generations.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a "small song" that swept the country, and it was filled in by literati and scholars, making it the prototype of local drama. The origin of Song and Yuan southern opera is also like this, it began with folk small dramas and lane songs, so it will have a high degree of singing.
As the earliest form of drama in China, the structure of southern opera is not complicated, and the form is relatively free, without the general rules and regulations of other traditional dramas.
Of course, the southern opera that lacks restraint does not pay attention to style and rhythm.
When the Song people moved the capital to Wenzhou, they found that the minor key in the local social fire activities was catchy, so they filled in the words, and some cast members added dance performances on the basis of the lyrics, and eventually evolved it into a theatrical art that can express complex stories. The "Narrative of Southern Words" mentioned above is the earliest document describing Southern Opera in China.
This book records the origin of Southern Opera: "Southern Opera began in the Song Guangzong Dynasty, and the Yongjia people composed "Zhao Zhennu" and "Wang Kui" were two kinds of real heads... Or Yun Xuan and The interval has been indiscriminate, and its prevalence is from the south, known as 'Yongjia Miscellaneous Drama', also known as 'Hu Lingsheng'. "From the perspective of form, Southern Opera can be called a smorgasbord of folk skills in the Song Dynasty.
In the Song and Yuan Southern Opera, we can see the shadows of Song miscellaneous dramas, puppet plays, song and dance songs, shadow plays, entanglement orders, and singing and earnings. In addition, the similarity between the southern opera and the various palace tunes from the singing tune is extremely high. It can be said that all the folk techniques popular in the Song Dynasty are the objects of absorption of southern opera. Because of this, southern opera will be more enduring than meta-drama.
Of course, due to the remote location of the Song government during the Southern Song Dynasty and the narrow territory, although southern opera was once popular in the south, it did not spread in the Central Plains. After The Mongolian Yuan established a unified regime, the southern opera went north and began to compete with the newly emerging yuan miscellaneous drama. At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, southern opera lovers established the "Yongjia Book Club", "Jiushan Book Club" and "Guhang Book Club", which absorbed a large number of exquisite literati and jointly created wonderful scripts.
When the time came to the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, some creators of meta-miscellaneous dramas also joined the creation of southern drama scripts, such as Xiao Dexiang, Wang Yuanheng and Ma Zhiyuan, all of whom were script writers who "jumped ship" from meta-miscellaneous dramas to southern operas. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the popularity of Yuan miscellaneous opera declined day by day, but Southern Opera was still in the dominant position of opera. Because Southern Opera has been passed down for a hundred years, it has been innovated and recreated in both the method of expression and the form of art, and it can no longer be the same as the Song Dynasty.
At present, there are still 180 surviving southern opera plays, but unfortunately only seventeen of the complete scripts are well preserved. In the Song and Yuan Operas, we can see the only seventeen southern operas left. Even the only surviving southern drama scripts of these fruits have been compiled by the Ming Dynasty, so what we see is no longer the original Song and Yuan southern dramas.
According to the records of the literature, the most popular passages at the beginning of the birth of Southern Opera were "Wang Kui" and "Zhao Zhennu", but these plays have now been lost. The Yongle Canon originally contained thirty-three southern drama repertoire, but during the eight-nation alliance's invasion of China, most of the "Yongle Canon" was robbed or burned, and in the fragments of the Yongle Canon, only "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan", "Eunuch Disciples Mistakenly Standing", and "Xiaosun Tu" were left.
In these hard-won southern drama repertoire, we can also see stories with great characteristics of Song Dynasty literature. Among the surviving southern operas today, the most precious one is "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan". It is reported that there are obvious traces of the transformation from official tones into drama in this work, and through the clues provided by this script, we can basically sort out the process of the birth of Song Yuannan opera.
In addition to providing posterity with historical evidence of the history of the development of ancient drama, the play itself is also worth reading. From the perspective of modern people, "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan" is a lively "negative heart drama", and its plot is wonderful enough to be put on today's screen and become a popular bitter drama.
It is said that there is a show talent Zhang Xie in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, who has tried many times, and had a strange dream in the year when he was about to enter Beijing to catch the exam, and in the dream he became a show talent with the title of the gold list.
With this good omen, Zhang Xie was full of confidence in the imperial examination, and he bid farewell to his parents and traveled thousands of miles to the capital to take the exam. In the process of hurrying, a group of robbers from Wuji Mountain grabbed Zhang Xie's luggage, knocked him unconscious, and abducted all the finesse.
Zhang Xie was seriously injured, and after waking up, he stumbled to a small temple in the mountains. Zhang Xie lay dying at the offering table, seeing that a life was about to be taken away by Yan Wangye.
Just then, a ragged girl came in from outside the temple gate. The young girl was kind-hearted, took the endangered Zhang Xie home to recuperate, and gave Zhang Xie all the few foods to eat.
After Zhang Xie recovered, he thanked the poor girl for her kindness, and married the girl with the help of his neighbor, Grand Duke Li. Although Zhang Xie had become a family, he was obsessed with Keju.
His entanglement has been taken away by mountain thieves, and he is penniless and can only turn to his wife for help. The poor woman's family is surrounded by walls, and she can't take out the silver money at all. In order to let Zhang Xie enter Beijing, she did not hesitate to sell her hair and borrow usurious loans from the squires, and finally made up enough travel expenses for Zhang Xie. Zhang Xie took the money raised by his wife and went north to Beijing.
Zhang Xieben had some talent, plus this year's examiners especially favored his articles, so he finally took the meritorious name, the title and the first. Zhang Xie performed well during the temple examination, and was made a parent official by the emperor and received a golden hundred and two. The poor woman heard that her husband had come to the capital by begging and wanted to reunite with Zhang Xie.
Who knows, Zhang Xie was actually a guy with a bad heart, he had no intention of recognizing his poor wife, and he also ordered the evil slaves to expel his wife from the capital with a stick. When the emperor wanted to marry his daughter to him, Zhang Xie bluntly refused, so that the prime minister committed suicide in shame.
When Zhang Xie, who had a wolf's heart and a dog's lungs, went to the garrison to take up his post, he passed through Wuji Mountain, where he was associated with a poor woman, and met the deceased again in that familiar small village. The poor woman thought that Zhang Xie had changed from evil to righteousness, and rushed forward to recognize him, who knew that Zhang Xie actually drew his sword and committed murder in public, severely injured the poor woman, and fled.
Just as the so-called thirty years of Hedong and thirty years of Hexi, Zhang Xie came to office not long ago, only to find that the official field was sinister, and even if he had the talent of the emperor, it was difficult to make progress in his career. In the process of entering Beijing to report for duty, Zhang Xie visited Wang Zaixiang again. The chancellor appreciated Zhang Xie's talent and gave him another daughter, Xu.
On the wedding night, Zhang Xie unveiled the bride's hijab, only to find that sitting in front of him was the abandoned poor girl! It turned out that the injured poor girl had been rescued by Wang Zaixiang, who saw that this woman had a good heart and adopted her as a righteous daughter. The poor woman has several snakes and scorpion hearts in the new house and refuses to have sex with him.
The next day, Wang Zaixiang arrived, heard that the two had explained the ins and outs, and under his mediation and persuasion, they finally let the young couple eliminate their old grudges and remarry.
The play "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan" satirizes those poor and transferable villains and praises the good character of poor women. The script is relatively long, so the story I tell may have omissions in detail. The script is very local, and the lines in it are also gags, witty and "grounded". Because this is an earlier drama in our country, it does not pay attention to the division of folds, and the performers who want to come to that time need to perform from the beginning of the year to the end, and test the basic skills.
In addition to "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan", "Jingchao" is also a wonderful southern drama.
It is said that Wang Shipeng, a famous scholar in Wenzhou, came from a poor family, and he used Jingchao as a dowry to marry a poor woman Qian Yulian. After the two got married, Wang Shipeng went to Beijing to take the exam and won the crown.
When the chancellor Wan Qianbi planned to give his daughter Xu to Wang Shipeng, Wang Shipeng resigned on the pretext. Because he had offended Wan Qianbi, he was sent to serve in a desolate place where there was no one to live, and cut off contact with the outside world.
When Qian Yulian was waiting for her husband's return at home, she was molested by Sun Ruquan, a disciple of Sun Ruquan, and Qian Yulian, who was angry, threw herself into the river and committed suicide, but fortunately, the Fujian pacification envoy passed through this place to save her and adopt her as a righteous daughter.
Later, Wan Qianjie was defeated in a political struggle, and Wang Shipeng was finally able to get ahead and was appointed by the emperor as the prefect of Ji'an. Wang Shipeng, who returned to the Central Plains, searched for the whereabouts of his wife, and eventually a lover eventually became a family member, and the husband and wife were reunited.
There are many similarities between this "Jingchao" and "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan", both of which restore the relatively real style of the Southern Song Dynasty for us.
Nowadays, some classic meta-dramas have been written into students' language textbooks, but southern opera is little known. For the opera world, this is simply an irreparable defect.
Through reading the only surviving southern drama book, it is not difficult to find that the art form of southern opera is not inferior to the meta-drama, and if more southern drama books are handed down, this art form will definitely be revived by modern artists and reappear in the style of today after a thousand years.
Resources:
["Jingchao", "Zhang Xiezhuangyuan", "Narrative of Southern Words", "Song and Yuan Drama Literature Collection"]