Discrimination Of Historical Play

Flourishing of historical TV plays in the 1990s triggered again people's debate on the question of "what is historical play". In regard to definition of the historical play, different people looked at it in different ways because dialogue does not happen at the same platform. In view of the above debate, this thesis, tracing back on the occurrence and development of historical play, is trying to dig out aesthetic pattern behind it, in the expectation of summing up a basic principle for the definition of historical play."Historical Play" is a modern concept. Its occurrence and development is based on the occurrence and development of drama. Viewing from the form of the script text, historical play does not only turn out for just one single appearance, but vary a lot in the interim of the development of history. By studying the historical evolvement and aesthetic pattern of historical play, this paper deem that concept of historical play shall be understood in both broad sense and narrow sense. Historical play in narrow sense is a historical concept. As such an art pattern, historical play built up in modern literature history is based on historicism; its art expression is between historical truth and art fiction; so it's a narrow sense of historical play; new change in contemporary culture context has resulted in qualitative change in current historical TV plays which differ from traditional ones. If one wants to define historical play, he shall carefully analyze its aesthetic pattern. Thus, in the relationship of "change" and "unchanged" of the development of historical play, this paper put forward three dimensions to define historical play, i.e. history, art and times.