Studies On Chinese Modern Historical Play's Development

The Chinese modern historical plays, as a major part of New Literature, have prospered rapidly under the influence of "May 4" New Culture Movement. As a result, the theory of playwriting experienced a process from green to mature.Living in an age of dramatic changes, the Chinese playwrights, with Guo Muoruo as major representative were all greatly influenced by Western culture as well as Chinese culture, and their view points on historical plays unexcludingly reflected the foreign impact and certain features of the time.During "May 4" period, the Chinese modern playwrights put more emphasis on expressing themselves than reproducing the historical facts, which only serve as an instrument to convey their own ideas. Consequently, the strongly political opinion loaded in the plays weakened the historical reality. Duing 1930s, Xiayan proposed a model of "associationism" about playwriting which is characterized with finding out something in common with the present situation. This makes it easy for playwrights to build a relation between them. The 1940s was the time which was not only featured by the fact that it was prosperoas with historical playwriting, but also by he fact that the theory of historical playwriting became mature. All playwrights took historical stories as heir raw material, and tried to discover the common spirit between past and present.The theory of Chinese historical playwriting was only the reflection of the experience in the past and it cannot solve all problems we would run into, but at least it can serve as a mirror or a guidelight for the historical playwriting in future.