On a square ringed by spring peach blossom, actors perform on a raised stage while acrobats climb tall poles; crowds gather to watch among food stalls, with a small bridge over a stream.
Song and Yuan Zaju
A maturing art of stage storytelling in which Chinese opera moved beyond pure music and dance into long stories, backed by the four skills and five methods.
Yuan ZajuZaju was already performed in the entertainment quarters of Northern Song Bianjing. Song zaju was made up of an opening piece, the main play and a closing piece (the yanduan, the zheng zaju and the sanduan), and drama took shape from it.
In the Yuan, Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, Ma Zhiyuan and others settled the Yuan zaju form of four acts and a wedge: a play has four acts, and an extra scene called a wedge may be added; long stage narrative reached its height. Yuan zaju grew out of Song and Jin zaju, yuanben skits and zhugongdiao ballads; each act uses one suite of northern songs in a single mode, sung by one lead role, male or female, while the other roles mostly speak.
In the Yuan, Zhong Sicheng's Register of Ghosts set down the lives of zaju writers. Zaju became the model for later drama.
In the Ming the influence of southern song deepened and zaju declined; in the Qing most zaju were read at the desk rather than staged.
Song and Yuan Zaju is the class in the chapter on Performance on the zaju of the Song and the Yuan, through which Chinese drama grew into mature stage storytelling. Zaju was already performed in the entertainment quarters of Northern Song Bianjing, and in the Yuan it settled into a form of four acts and a wedge, able to carry a long story.
Zaju was already performed in the entertainment quarters of Northern Song Bianjing (about 1100). Song zaju was made up of an opening piece, the main play and a closing piece, and drama took shape from it.
In the early Yuan (about 1280), Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, Ma Zhiyuan and others settled the Yuan zaju form of four acts and a wedge, and long stage narrative reached its height.
About fifty years later, Zhong Sicheng wrote the Register of Ghosts (about 1330), setting down the lives of Yuan zaju writers.
On a Song-Yuan variety-play stage, painted-face performers in every role-type act out the drama while a side band of clappers, drums, and flutes accompanies and a dense crowd fills the ground below. The full maturity of stage dramatic art transitioning forms into complex multi-act plots.
In a Yuan playhouse, a zaju is being played on the stage. The first act introduces the characters, in the second the matter turns, the third comes to the crux, and in the fourth it is settled. When the show breaks up, the audience is still arguing over which act moved them more.
In the Yuan, Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, Ma Zhiyuan and others settled the Yuan zaju form of four acts and a wedge, and long stage narrative reached its height; zaju was already performed in the entertainment quarters of Northern Song Bianjing, and Song zaju was made up of an opening piece, the main play and a closing piece. (This is an illustrative story, not a historical account.)