Wang Shifu

Also known as Ming Dexin

Wang Shifu, whose given name was Dexin, came from Dadu, the Yuan capital, and almost nothing else is known of his life. Zhong Sicheng's Register of Ghosts (Lugui bu) lists him among the deceased senior playwrights, after Guan Hanqing, with fourteen zaju plays, of which three survive complete and two in fragments. His best-known work, The Story of the Western Wing (Xixiang ji), draws on Yuan Zhen's Tang tale of Yingying and the Jin-dynasty ballad version by Master Dong, and tells the courtship of Student Zhang and Cui Yingying in five parts and twenty-one acts, far beyond the usual four acts of a zaju. In an elegy added to the Register in the early Ming, Jia Zhongming wrote that among all plays old and new the Western Wing took first place. Zhu Quan's Formulary of Correct Rhymes compared Wang's lyrics to a beauty among flowers, and in the early Qing Jin Shengtan published an annotated edition as the sixth of his books of genius.