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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Yüan opera, if we limit our material to the one hundred examples found in the Yüan-ch'ü hsüan (YCH), seems to be a well defined genre, the numerous formal peculiarities of which can be shown to have evolved from earlier entertainment forms in a manner truly comforting to the literary historian. Analyzed, Yiian drama shows a highly consistent structure with the following features:
1. Four “acts” with the option of a demi-act, “wedge,” which can appear between any two acts, or at the beginning of the tsa-chü (Yüan opera).
2. Within each act all arias were sung to tunes of the same mode.
1 Infrequently, five acts. In these cases, th e fifth act is not in place of, but may be in addition to the “wedge.”
2 A, hsien lüa; B, nan lüb; C, cheng kungc; D, chung laüd; E, huang chunge; F, shuang tiaof; G, yüeh tiaoo; H,shang tiaoh; I, ta shihi.
3 Certain sequences such as tunes 30 + 32 + 32 in mode C and 44 + 45 in mode D are almost never separated.
4 The various books of Hsi-hsiangchi have the longest song-sets; Yuan-k'an 16 and Ku-pen 12 have acts with only three arias. As a rule “military” operas run to short song-sets and “non-military” to longer ones.
5 Topics in Chinese Literature, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 94–96Google Scholar.
6 Yüan-ch'ü lien-t'ao shu-li' (Commercial Press, 1933).
7 Wang Kuo-wei, Sung Yüan hsi-chü shih, pp. 151–153, and Ku-pen 42, foil. 3b–4a.
8 Yung-lo ta-tien hsi-wen san-chung, photocopy (n.d.), foll. 54b-60a. I t was from this opera that the term yüan-pen was understood to mean simply any performance by a traveling-troupe. See Cheng Chen-to, Su-wen-hsüeh shih, 11, 38.
9 Cheng, pp. 39–55.
10 Aoki, Gennin zatsugeki shokusetsuk, Chinese trans. (Shanghai: K'ai-ming, 1941), pp. 32–40.
11 By Huang Hsueh-so. See in Ku-chin shuo-hai, 19. For chi I, Aoki has chim.
12 It seems strange that these rubrics do not make space for the aspiring degree candidate which is the pivot of a majority of operas.
13 Ch'ing-pai lei-ch'aon: 78, 18–19.
14 Better known as Wang-chiang t'ing.
15 As with all general statements, this is misleading in part. For example, T'ieh-kuai li, YCH 29, has a long dialogue and a series of events which are devised simply to allow Chang-ch'ien a preposterous amount of bragadoccio in order that his subsequent comedown might be more comical. Kuan Han-ch'ing's operas consistently contain more humor than the average; see also Ku-pen 6. It is also not clear at times whether the entrance verse for the eking was understood as villainous, comic, or both.
16 The Yüan-k'an san-shih chung is a collection of aria-words with cues published for fans. The abridged form of this Yuan-dynasty publication caused some scholars to conclude that Tsang's preface was correct and composers wrote only arias. This theory is even less sensible today than it was in 1923. Most operas were probably joint enterprises in early times and were connected with an actors' guild in a manner which is still obscure. See Sun K'ai-ti, Yeh-shth-yüan ku-chin tsa-chü k'aoo (Shanghai, 1953), pp. 388–395.
17 See Aoki, p. 51. Thirteen operas in the Yuüan-k'an text have the same titles as YCH.
18 Referred to as (Fu) Yüan-k'an tsa-chü' san-shih chungp. See n. 16.
19 For the details of purchase see Cheng's Chieh chung te-shu chic (Shanghai, 1956), pp. 126–138.
20 Many of the MSS had been copied from the Ming palace library collection. For an exhaustive job of bibliophile description see Sun, but a shorter, clearer picture of the contents as they were found is given by Cheng in his Te-shu chi appendix.
21 Exceptions include the curious Ku-pen 24, which is written for one male and one female singing role and arranged in Northern and Southern song-sets. Ku-pen 23 contains recitations and songs to drum accompaniment which occur in the middle of a song-set but are not part of the set.
22 Sun, pp. 375–379 and 414; Cheng, Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh lun-chi, pp. 70–94, and Yoshi-kawa Kōjirō, Gen zatsugeki kenkyū. For remarks on the last see Hightower's review, FEQ, IX (Feb. 1950), 210.
23 Crump, HJAS, XIX (Dec. 1956), 420–435, esp. 433–434.
24 The reverse elaboration /(song) introduction/—/song/ was also possible, and is used in the Hsi-hsiang chu-kung-tiao.
25 For the statistically minded, the probability that no “wedge” would show up after the last act in a random distribution is on the order of one chance in one million. For a tacit recognition of the fact that /wedge → act, wedge/ pertains rather than /wedge, act → wedge/, see the opening words of Sun's article on the “wedge.”
26 Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-liao, ed. Ling-ching, K'ung (Shanghai, 1936), p. 17Google Scholar.
27 Another yūan-pen, obviously not built around a dramatic song, is to be found in ch. 31 of the unexpurgated (1617) ed. of Chin-p'ing-mei tz'u-hua. We have no way of knowing whether it was a stage unit or whether the author of Chin-p'ing-mei created it himself. Bishop's sleuthing, HJAS, XVII (June, 1954), 394–402, makes it reasonable to assume the yüan-pen was an independent unit which the author incorporated.
28 Actually a cotton-fluffing mechanism powered by a bow-like device.
29 Despite Cheng's vague statement (Su-wen-hsüeh shih, II, 62) that yüan-pen came to be influenced by Yüan opera.
30 In YCH, dialogue preceding the songs averages two pages of type, dialogue succeeding them averages three lines of type.
31 See n. 9.
32 A favorite form of hsiang-shengr, generally a social entertainment, and shu-lai-pao, a Peking street-entertainment form.
33 These are not literal translations, but the lampoon aspect of the titles is as clear in Chinese as it is in English.
34 An interesting fact for speculation and study is the lack of titles indicating persons or incidents connected with the best-loved historical stories. The lady of the long wall, Meng-chiang nü, is one of the very few to be found. Yüan-pen were, obviously, “quickies” which could not afford the time needed to sketch out a story-line.
35 See Sun, p. 373. As a verb chang-chi meant to arrange a script for production, or simply, ‘to compose.’ See Ku-pen 42, 4b, line 9.
36 Wai-ch'eng” (tav?). Many Ku-pen scripts were originally published complete even to the list of costumes and props used by each character—a far cry from the garbled, barren texts of the Yüan-k'an.
37 For purposes of this paper any opera involving soldiers or armed combat comes under this heading.
38 See Yao Chi-heng, Ku-chin wei-shu k'ao, ed. Ku Chieh-kang (1929), p. 37 ff. The beliefs attached to the Seven Books and their providential “rediscovery” in Southern Sung times is a subject for extensive study.
39 t'ien lüeh”, ti lüeh, jen lüeh, and ma liaox. The same level of consonance as my pun has in English.
41 A variation of the same travesty appears ibid., 27, 8a.
42 See I-pai, Chouv, Chung-kuo hsi-chü shih (Shanghai, 1953), pp. 113–116Google Scholar.
43 Ibid., p. 104. There is no reason to take this derivation seriously, and the fact that there was a dance conductor with a military title as well as the “Old Sergeant” makes the whole problem very obscure.
44 Liu, James, Elizabethan and Yuan (London: China Society, 1955)Google Scholar; Wu-chi, Liu, “The Original Orphan of China,” Comparative Literature, V (1953), 193–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crump, “On Chinese Medieval Vernacular,” Wennti, No. 5 (Nov. 1953), Aoki, Yoshikawa, and others (see FEQ, XII [May, 1953], 329; Sun, and Hsi hsiang chu-kung-tiao (photo repro., Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1955)Google Scholar.
