Study On The Drama Forbidden Policy And Drama In Ming Dynasty

The forbidden drama is one of the important factors which influence the ecology development and even the future direction of the drama. The government often puts forward various kinds of policies or rules to enhance the authority on the drama, theatre, the freedom of the actors or actress, the creation of the drama, and the audience reception. Furthermore, the government even to destroy the draft of the drama or to forbid the drama activities in order to prevent the transmission of the drama when it conflicts with the Confucius ideas of the government on aesthetic taste or values. All of the rules constitute the cultural autocracy policy on forbidden drama.Since the beginning of Ming Dynasty, the central government adopted the policy of cultural conservatism in order to establish the orthodox neo-Confucianism as the official ideology, and took the measures to forbid and limit the drama which has huge influence in the population. The drama forbidden policy had been carried out throughout the Ming dynasty. Under the influence, there were also appeared the local government decree based local government ban on drama, and some private acts of drama forbidden which appeared by the family motto or rural folk in the Ming Dynasty.In the early period of Ming dynasty, the drama activities were prohibited under constant restraint and repression. In this period, drama activities have been repeatedly suppressed in the ancient imperial palace with the culture cognition of worshipping ancient music as well as suppression "folk music". In the middle and late period of Ming Dynasty, Emperor usually took watching drama as one of daily entertainments. In this situation, the influence of "ancient music" theory gradually gave way to entertainment function of "modern music","folk music". The court theatre began to enter the stage of rapid development in Long Qing, Wan Li period. In addition, since the beginning of Ming dynasty, with the influence of drama forbidden policy and court ritual system, drama which treated as folk music was placed as the opposition of Ya music--the main stream music form of court. Therefore, it was restricted and repressed in many aspects such as performing occasions, music positions and so on. Thus, the music elements of drama were difficult to integrate with Ya music. All these factors lead the drama can not change into "Ya" music throughout the Ming dynasty despite the its prosperous in performance field.There have been some performances of family troupes in the early Ming period. But with the repression of drama forbidden policy and constraints of public opinion of intellectual, these performances were not taken seriously by the intellectual and the artistic value also has not been fully recognized. In the drama forbidden policy, there were no legal restrictions to family troupes which provide convenient conditions for the spread of its performances. Since the mid-Ming dynasty, the performances of family troupes came into prosperity being a major feature of drama activities in Ming dynasty. At the same time, some conservative intellectual in the late Ming criticized the performances of family troupes which can be seen to some extent as projection on the moral level of drama forbidden policy.Folk drama activities in the Ming Dynasty were restricted by the central and local theater ban decree force. The Ming court in the central theater ban decree the specific behavior of the folk drama, and put more emphasis on identity discrimination and the lifting of the restrictions to block the actors and other social groups. Such measures lead to the prosperity of the folk drama objectively as fewer blocks on performances of folk drama. With the prosperity of folk drama, all levels of local administrative put forward more regulations and restrictions on them leading to some damages on the specific forms and ecology of folk drama.In addition, these policies also influenced the race community theater and the Kabuki drama activities. The drama forbidden policy especially the definition of "Sacrifice" prohibited local officials destroyed, so that the race social drama contains not only with the attributes of the folk customs and cultural behavior, rose to become subject to the country about tube and within a certain range by the government to allow and encourage activities. This policy plays the two sides with positive and negative effects on drama in Ming Dynasty. At one side, music prostitutes drama, in the long-term effects of drama forbidden policy, alienated the drama performance of Yuan Dynasty. A cappella became more common which reflects the long-term implementation of drama forbidden policy, even the impact of the folk drama activities.Influenced by the policy of the Ming Dynasty banned the contempt brought by the music, including opera, the number of literati in the Ming Dynasty engaged in drama was greatly reduced thus the quality and quantity of works were relatively poor compared with Yuan Dynasty. In the late Ming Dynasty, more literati engaged in drama followed by more inquisitions indicated the repression of drama forbidden policy on ideological level.The implementation of drama forbidden policy led to relative long period of inactive state of drama creation as well as the mentality of feeling shameful in drama in the circle of intellectuals. On the other hand, the intellectuals still held on some conservative thoughts in the late Ming Dynasty.In this process, the drama of the Ming Dynasty was gradually to prosperity-from "xiao dao" in the early period to be part of Orthodox literature in late Ming Dynasty.Corresponded with drama development, the drama theory of Ming Dynasty also experienced from orthodoxy in early Ming period to "ben se","dang hang" theory with the "expressing emotions theory" on the backwash consciously. These three theories mutually are emphasized, and gradually developed to the classical drama in the debate. To sum up, the drama forbidden policy developed from control to relatively loose in the whole Ming dynasty. In the early period, this policy did lots of harm to the drama development. It affected the factors of drama system through administrative means and thoughts control and so on. By leading some factors fell into a development bottleneck, or cutting off the links of different factors, it influenced the develop path of drama in Ming dynasty, some phenomena linked closely to the drama forbidden policy occurred in the drama development process of Ming dynasty.While in the mid and late period of Ming dynasty, influenced by the integrated factors of social economy, culture and drama itself, the drama forbidden policy and activities had gradually lost the control to the drama. In this period, the loose of drama forbidden policy was helpful to the development of drama. With the relatively relaxed environment, the family troupe was prosperous as well as the folk drama. At the same time, with frequent contacts with drama players, the intellectuals engaged in the writing and playing of drama which promoted the development of drama in Ming dynasty.