| Court has been an important stage in all periods of happening at developing of drama in ancient times in China. Court drama with its specific art cultural concept is a special phenomenon of the history of drama, which is not only related to the ancient drama but also has its own feature. The study of court drama accompanies with the development of drama history in the 20th century step by step, but this study basically concentrates on the acting play of Qing Dynasty,and merely pays attention to other dynasties. This article takes some court dramas which were written by unknown court artists in Ming dynasty and now preserved into the Zaju from Maiwangguan as an object of study in order to study the court drama of Ming Dynasty wholly and systematically.This article can be divided into five chapters.Chapter 1, textual research for the list of play for court drama.The Zaju from Maiwangguan is a biggest complete works of drama in Chinese ancient period, and it preserves about 242 types of dramas in Yuan and Ming Dynasty. This work can be divided into two systems, one is block-printed edition and the other is hand-copied edition. Those dramas in block-printed edition basically were written by some certain artists in Yuan and Ming Dynasty, but hand-copied edition preserves many works which were written by unknown artists in Ming Dynasty. The content of this chapter is finding out those court dramas which were written by unknown artists in Ming Dynasty from whole works, and it totally has 73 types.Chapter 2, the contents of the court drama. Court drama can be divided into three types according to its content, that is, historical story drama, immortal drama and court celebration drama. Historical story dramas occupy the biggest proportion in the whole works and it totally has 48 plays. Those dramas include thousands of years about Chinese historical stories from Spring-Autumn period to Ming Dynasty, and it is also a project which has clear system and direction. Immortal dramas use fairy tale as material, it includes the Dutuo drama and Xiangmo drama. All the contents reflect religious thought to seek unity of three kinds of religions and worship the Taoist religion in Ming Dynasty. Court celebrating drama is written for congratulating birthday or celebrating festivals. This kind of play pays more attention to ceremony and realistic needs, and it always chooses some materials of eulogizing rulers' virtues and achievements or embodying jubilant and auspicious atmosphere to reflect emotion, it seldom has drama conflict, but pays more attention to stress lively and happy occasion.Chapter 3, script system of court drama. It includes some main problems, such as ,the usage of the Qupai and tunes of a drama, the art of Binbai, the art of Kehun, dealing with the relationship between appearing on the stage and going off the stage, ending handling and so on. Generally speaking, court drama of Ming Dynasty carries forward good traditions of court drama in Yuan Dynasty, but has some developments, and then forms its own style. The usage of the names of the tunes and tune of a drama, dealing with the relationship between appearing on the stage and going off the stage, and ending handling embody court drama's characteristic of stylizing and standardization adequately.Chapter 4, performance system of court drama. It includes "chuanguan" , "qiemo" and occasion handling. "chuanguan" means drama figures' dress and makeup. "chuanguan" in court drama of Ming Dynasty is the earliest most systematical historical material of drama dress in drama history. It noy only has a multitude of names, but also classifies thoroughly. It has the characteristic of typical quality, stylizing, symbolization and stage effect, it exerts a great influence to the development of drama dress of later ages. "qimo" means the prop in drama performance. A special point of court drama is gorgeous props. On the using of prop strives to plentiful and peculiar effort and pursues luxury, but pays more attention to realistic artistic effect in order to show imperial imposing manner. On occasion handling, the start point of court drama is serving for various grand banquets for rulers, so it must strengthen stage effect and visual arts. Their final target is acquiring audiences' approval. This kind of play goes in for ostentation and extravagence, so it always has a very lively occasionwith numerous personages, magnanimous momentum and active atmosphere.Chapter 5, the whole characteristic and value assessment of court drama, the first part is the overall characteristic of court drama. During study of court drama in Ming Dynasty, we can feel the most characteristic of those works is stereotyped, lacks of flexible and diversified artistic personality, but this just proves court drama pursuing standardization in form.Although it doesn't has high achievement, but it has distinct whole characteristics, that is, stylizing, stage effect and palace form. The sceond part analyses the forming reason of court drama characteristics, we mainly discuss social and political reasons for the production of court drama of Ming Dynasty, rulers' attitude towards drama, performance organization, the social position of actors and actresses and the influence of religious thinking. The third part is value assessment of court drama..Objectively speaking, court drama doesn't has high achievement, and it is devoid of content, but those works enbody the eulogy for Chinese unitary regime and reveal national confidence and pride from deep structure which can compare favourably with literature in flourishing age of Han and Tang Dynasty. On the script creation and performance system, those works make a great contribution to standardize the drama creation. On the performance form, all elements, such as lively ostentation and extravagance, gorgeous props stage effect and entertainment quality have made an influence to the creation and performance of court drama in Qing Dynasty directly.Overall, the Ming Dynasty court drama carries forward the good traditions of Yuan Dynasty, and makes some developments to it. Although it just has limited achievement, but occupies a dominant position in drama realm about 100 years in the early age of Ming Dynasty .The existence of this kind of phenomenon is not an occasional situation, it has its own indispensable cognitive action and artistic value, and it is suitable for study as a kind of phenomenon of literary history.
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