Ming Dynasty High Spirits Of The Ming Dynasty Opera

During the development history of opera, the Yuan Dynasty is another golden period after the Ming Dynasty, being the first era in opera history that drama and imperial examination system prospered simultaneously. As the impact of imperial examination, the opera of Ming Dynasty have shown several novel characteristics from authorship, creative motivation, ideological content and language style. Specifically, the first reason is that most of the drama authors have taken the imperial examination and have received relevant education, which makes Ming opera unavoidably influenced by the examination system. Second, a large part of the authors have a certain social status so that the social impact of the opera authors has been improved significantly. Second, from the perspective of creation purpose, because of the changed social status of opera authors, the creation motive and enlightenment in Ming Dynasty have deepened than previous dynasties. Besides, there have been no practical purposes for the first stage performance; the only aim is to meet the needs of the creative spirit of their own. Third, from the perspective of content, description of imperial examination has increased greatly in Ming opera, and there even have been works using imperial examination as sole theme. Meanwhile, as the importance of imperial examination in social life, the value orientation in the Ming Dynasty has leaned towards the way it leads—there exists an obvious complex of imperial examination, furthermore, the meaning of traditional feudal morality such as filial piety, talent have been affected by the examination system apparently. Last but not least, a special style of Ming Dynasty Imperial Examination, i.e. Baguwen stereotyped writings has exerted certain impact on the creation of opera, which leads to a tendency of"taking current essays as Southern Drama", embodied in the opera's aesthetic orientation, shaping of characters, language arts and other aspects.