The History Of Drama And Drama In The History

Following Wang Guowei, Zhou Yibai sets another academic peak in the field of Chinese Drama Studies. His academic contributions and historical value lie in: endeavoring to avert the Wang Guowei-style view of drama which centers around drama as Literary Object and boasts "a specific generation has a specific literature". Through "Not performed on stage, not to be counted", Zhou Yibai pulls the vision of drama studies from Wang's literary object back to the object of acting as the drama itself. The seven Chinese drama monographs he composed, despite the difference in composing times, are all penetrated with "general view", the vision of general history. Propping by the idea of "using history as the argument", he endeavors to explore and get hold of the historical rule of Chinese drama's development profoundly. Zhou Yibai performed drama in his teens, composed drama in his middle age, criticized drama in his senectitude. The experience he accumulated as performing in civilian circus, Beijing Opera and civilized drama enlightened him both sensibly and significantly to choose the cut-in vision for his later theory studies. Looking through the creation and practice of his whole life, he bases on "Not performed on stage, not to be counted", cutting in at the episodes of the drama, arguing the evolution and inheritance of drama through the story inheritance, style extension, scene transference, vocal transform etc elements. That is to say, no matter it is drama studies or drama practice, "Not performed on stage, not to be counted" should be a second to none critique standard. He takes this standard as a drama concept, involving it into all his theories and drama scripts. Therefore, the writer holds that as Zhou Yibai's view of drama, "Not performed on stage, not to be counted", is never accomplished at one stoke. It, as a systematic cognition, must have gone through continuous accumulation from early assumption to later argumentation, and concluded from thorough summarization. Hence, the writer assumes the three monographs of drama history he composed before Chinese civil war as in his theoretic assumption period, the four monographs of drama history published after Chinese civil war as in his theoretical argumentation period. Centering around the deduction they make use of for reinstating the panorama of dramas in history from the historical pieces left in dramas, this article argues that this deduction is in line with his historical rule of the development of Chinese drama, which features "Not performed on stage, not to be counted".