On a garden pavilion stage by lake light, a scholar and a lady hold a slow paired pose, a pipa player and a bamboo flute player beside them, a plum branch reaching in.
Ming-Qing Chuanqi
Ming and Qing chuanqi, such as Peony Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan
Introduction
Chuanqi are the longer plays in southern tunes of the Ming and Qing, and they grew out of the southern drama of the Song and Yuan. A script is made up of sung verse, spoken lines and stage directions; each section is called a chu, and the first chu, called the jiamen or opening, is entered by the fumo. The plays are much longer than Yuan zaju, often forty or fifty chu; the music is mainly southern with some northern tunes, and the sheng and dan are the leads. After Wei Liangfu reformed the Kunshan style of singing in the Jiajing and Longqing years, chuanqi entered its peak. Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion and Kong Shangren's Peach Blossom Fan are both chuanqi; Peony Pavilion originally has 55 chu.