Study Of Qing Dynasty Opera Long Xie

With further development of traditional Chinese opera during the years of Emperor Kangxi, chuanqi (the legendary short story) became shorter than before while its performance effects onstage was intensified. At the same time, zaju (Yuan-dynasty drama), in the hands of literati, emphasize much on the emotional expression. Under such circumstances, the legendary short story Dreams in a Taoist Temple and Yuan-dynasty drama Tales of Furong Town written by Long xie, which were both suitable for reading and for being transformed into performance, were remarkable drama works. Wang jiang County of Anqin city in Anhui province, the hometown of Longxie, thus earned a place in the history of traditional Chinese opera.This paper, which is aimed to make a relatively comprehensive research on Longxie, attempts to comprehensively explain his family background, life, circle of acquaintance, thinking and to emphasize on the analysis of the unique feature of his works on the basis of the predecessors’researches.This paper is made up of three chapters. The first chapter mainly focuses on Long xie’s family background, life experience, circle of acquaintance and works. Long xie’s ancestor, Long Renfu, who was once a famous scholar in Yuan dynasty, enjoyed quite a reputation in the history of literature; His father Long Yingding stepped into official career through Mingjing----a traditional way of becoming an official of court by understanding clearly and being practice in the study of Confucian classics----and served in Haimen county as an instructor; his old brother succeeded in the highest imperial examinations and then became a court official. So Longxie was born in a family of which all the members were erudite intellectuals and talent people. When Longxie was young, he was so vigorous and passionate that he despised the imperial examination. He rejected the imperial examination after failed several times. Later Longxie secured an official position in Peking through Hongbo (a way used to select talents) and died at his post. While Longxie had been in Peking, he had made a lot of friends and kept frequent contacts with celebrities like Fengpu, Wang Shizhen, Tianwen, Zhao Shilin, Xue Zhudou. This chapter also introduces Longxie’s poems, works and his thought and character in a detailed way, in order to make the basic information of Longxie systematic and clear to the reader.The second chapter puts emphasizes on the ideological contents and artistic features of one of Longxie’s works Dreams in a Taoist Temple, and presents the overview of its performance and influence after played on the stage. With respect to the ideological contents, this chapter elaborates from three parts respectively, i.e. expression of self appeal, praise of being able to choose one’s own marriage, affirmation of women’s talent. In this drama, Longxie fully displayed his own fate by making the character Jiang Yunzhong end in achieving success and winning recognition, which reflects the call of literati in the early Qing dynasty for Hongbo of the eighteenth year of Emperor Kangxi as well as the anxiousness of the literati in that times for serving the court. With respect to the artistic features, this chapter pays more attention to the comedy quality of the drama, the structure and personality of character. Comedy quality can be found in the characters’personality, the language that characters use as well as comic plot like misconstructions and coincidences. Longxie ingeniously unfolded the story along two threads, cutting down unnecessary plot and highlighting the main thread. The personality of characters in this drama is very distinctive; here the second chapter emphasizes the analysis and deconstruction of protagonist Bold Intellectual Jiang Yunzhong, Female Scholar Yuan Canxia and The Swordwoman Bao Yunji.The third chapter mainly researches artistic feature of zaju Tales of Furong Town and describes the romanticism presented in works of Longxie, whose characteristic of focusing on performance was extremely striking against the background of suitable for reading tendency in early Qing dynasty. This paper probes to Longxie’s attention on stage performance from the following aspects:costume, mode of sing, Gongdiao (modes of ancient Chinese music), Qupai (the names of the tunes), spoken parts, lyrics, Kejie(a hint of characters’action, expression) and stage setting. In addition, the paper researches on the influence of Xuwei’s zaju on Longxie’s zaju, no matter on the bold and unrestrained language or the fantastic and unfettered artistic conception. After all, in a deeper level, we can feel Longxie’s inheritance of the underlying spirit in zaju of Xuwei.