Research On "Drama Of The Dream In Red Mansion" In The Qing Dynasty

Since Cao Xueqin's novel The Dream of the Red Chamber had been presented to the public, it speaded quickly in the intellectuals and aroused more extensive aesthetic desire of a variety of social strata (or the aesthetic desire of the entire people of the country I may say ). People became more eager for the appearance of the dramatic form of The Dream of the Red Chamber ("the Red Chamber's Drama") on the stage.At the time, many dramatists began to adapt the novel for the performance to meet the common people's needs. In addition, the novel's dramatic quality, exciting power and moving tragedy, or the dramatists' striving for showing originality because of the dissatisfation with others' adaptation, all made it become popular to put the story of The Dream of the Red Chamber to the stage. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty , the adaptation of the novel for the performance even became one of fashions.The paper intends to make a careful research on the dramas of The Dream of the Red Chamber in the Qing Dynasty about their overall survey and some important but neglected problems. The paper is divided into seven parts: the first one is to card all the dramas and their authors in the Qing Dynasty that I can found; the second one is to probe into the adaptations of the novel for the performance in the Qing Dynasty; the third one is to study the inheritance and innovation on the dramatic systematic regulations of these dramas; the fourth one is to discuss the influence of those days' creation thought upon these dramas ; the fifth one is to analyse the people's attitude to these dramas and their comment on these dramas at that time; the sixth is to study on some important but easy to be overlooked problems in these dramas; the seventh one is to review the female dramatist Wu Lanhui and her drama Jiang Heng Qiu.Although the position of the dramas of The Dream of the Red Chamber in the Qing Dynasty is not very high in Chinese drama history ,it still requires our study just for their special relationship with the Chinese classic of The Dream of the Red Chamber. I hope that the research in this paper may give some help to the current study on the dramas of The Dream of the Red Chamber in academic circle, make up for some insufficiency in Chinese ancient drama study and also benefit current study of The Dream of the Red Chamber.