The beautiful Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai is a gem. The garden is said to have been built by a wealthy official in 1559, in the Ming Dynasty, for his parents to enjoy in their old age.
The garden includes a spacious theatre. The stage is raised and ornately decorated with a courtyard in front and long side galleries. The style is somewhat like that of early European theatres, where members of the audience would roam about, talk with each other, enter and leave, eat and drink, as the entertainment went on. Drama was the background to all sorts of social activities and was not the sole focus of the audience as it is in the dark and formal theatres of today.
John Francis Davis, later British Governor of Hong Kong, who spoke and read Chinese fluently, published a two volume book, “The Chinese” in 1836. He said that Chinese were very keen on drama.
“In the moderate collection of Chinese books belonging to the East India Company, there are no less than two hundred volumes of plays, and a single work in forty volumes contains just one hundred theatrical pieces.”
He gives extracts from several plays but his comments on the actors make clear their low status. “The players in general come literally under our legal definition of vagabonds, as they consist of strolling bands of ten or a dozen whose merit and rank in their profession, and consequently their pay, differ widely according to circumstances. The best are those who come from Nanking (Nanjing), and who sometimes receive very considerable sums for performing at the entertainments given by rich persons and their friends. The female parts are never performed by women, but generally by boys.”
The examinations of Imperial China which chose scholars for official employment through open competitive examination were not, in fact, open to everyone. Actors were specifically excluded from applying to take the examinations.
***
©Phillip Bruce
No comments:
Post a Comment