Meng Chenshun Drama Theories

Meng Chengshun, was a playwright and drama theorist during the periodof late Ming dynasty. Although Meng Chengshun was born out of time andhis official career was full of frustrations, he goes deep into the commonpeople and pay close attention to the poor people’s livelihood. He used hiswork to fight against the injustice of the system. He created the writingswhich have allegorical function to declaim against the corrupt society. Histheory of the drama usually can be seen during the inscriptions, prefaces,head notes and interlines of Drama Anthology of Ancient andContemporary Times。This paper mainly use Drama Anthology of Ancientand Contemporary Times as the source text analysis the commentaries andannotations of it systematically, and elaborate on the drama theory of MengChengshun with the combination of his inventive practice.The preface mainly investigates the research of Meng Chengshun inrecent years, and points out achievement and demerit. There are fivechapters in this paper. The first chapter is chiefly inquired into thetheoretical bases of Meng’s drama theory. His thoughts werecomprehensive because of the inflation of the traditional Confucianism andthe zeitgeist. From the chapter two to the chapter five are mainly to analyzethe deep reflection of Meng ‘s drama theory from four fields: expressions,figure, language and style. Expression theory is affected a maximum byTang Xianzu but show his its own exceptional characteristics also. Reasonand feelings match toward from antithesis to unification. The figure fielddescribes the figures from the superficial to the profound and from theappearance to the manner then finally goes into the inner parte of thecharacters all reveal the special importance function in the narrativeliterature. The language field brought forth the value of spoken parts for thefirst time, which has the achievement of initiation. The requirements aboutLyric combines elegant and worldliness, lyrics are all playing on the beatbring his work to a perfection level. The style field treats the work as themain subject to divide, it advocates the variety of the style and explores theformation of the style deeply, then propose the assertion of negative theimitation and cling to the innovation.The conclusions from the analysis: Meng Chengshun is a paragon notonly the way he creates drama also the way to be a man in that time. Hetaught others with his creative practice and his view of the literature. He hasno regrets to live in that period. He was the hero in that misfortune time. Histheory views exceed ancestors in many aspects, and he maked a great contribution to the classical drama of our country. He also played aconstructive role in promoting development and prosperous of the drama.