Writers › Writer / Poet
Lu Tiancheng
Yuyao playwright and critic, a follower of Shen Jing, whose Qupin graded the dramatists and chuanqi plays of the Ming
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Qinzhi · Hao Jijin · Yu Lansheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Lu Tiancheng, courtesy name Qinzhi, came from Yuyao in Zhejiang and was a great-grandson of the Jiajing grand secretary Lu Ben. His father Lu Yinchang loved the theatre, and his grandmother, of the book-collecting Sun family of Henghe, kept a large library of plays that he read through as a boy. He admired Shen Jing of Wujiang and was a close friend of Wang Jide of Kuaiji, with whom he often discussed the rules of dramatic song. He wrote ten chuanqi plays, among them Shennu ji, gathered as the Yanhuan ge chuanqi, most of which are now lost. His Grading of Dramas (Qupin), completed around 1610 on the model of Zhong Rong's Grading of Poets, ranks more than a hundred Ming dramatists and over two hundred plays, placing Shen Jing and Tang Xianzu together in the highest grade. He died in 1618 at only thirty-nine.
Life and times
Dates 1580 CE–1618 CE