Late Ming Opera Artist Xu Zichang Studied

The ancient Chinese opera reached another development peak in the Wanli Year of the Ming Dynasty. The playwright Xu Zichang has a special place on ancient Chinese opera history because of his work Shui Hu Ji (The Water Margin), Xu was born in a very rich merchant family in Fuli, Suzhou. He built Meihua Shu (Plum Blossom Villa), which was as magnificent as the Humble Administrator's Garden, to attract celebrities. Xu was keen on proofreader, engraving, poems recitation, bewriting, undressed-up rehearsal, playwriting, organizing family musical and performing his own plays.This article discusses Xu Zichang's life, family background, gardens and family musical, focuses upon the analysis of Xu's social intercourse based on opera, and then analyzes the development of his ideology and opera playwriting.Based on the former study, by looking up in ancient books and literature, the author sorted out that Xu's social intercourse involved not only dramatists and opera critics, but also opera amateurs. Among them there were Qi Biaojia and his father, whose relationship with Xu was called "friendship spanning for generations". Qi was a famous opera theorist, and his father was a famous bibliophile. Consequently, Qi should clearly understand Xu's works. According t(?) Qi's Yuanshantang Qu Pin (Yuanshantang Dramatic Criticism), which doesn't indicate that Xu had re-edited Wang Yuangong's Ling Xi Pei (Lingxi Jade) and Nong Zhu Lou(Nongzhu Building), the author believes the above two works were not written by Xu.The art of parallelism occupied a leading position in the legendary opera circle during the Wanli Year. Xu's works have an obvious characteristic of opera-scholarization, i.e. on the topic selection, all subject matters are selected from literary outputs and history books. Moreover, on the language style, they tended to use literary quotation and emphasied elegancy, parallel and flowery strucure.Xu Zichang admired chivalrousness,as a result, his works were individualized and he wrote Shui Hu Ji (The Water Margin) and Jie Xia Ji (Solar Term and Errantry). In his later period, he was influenced by Buddhism and Taoism, that's why his Ju Pu Ji and Zhong Yu Ji tended to be deified.