The Chinese Theater
9781465684073
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Students of the Pear Garden” (Li Yuan Tzu Ti) is the name by which actors in China are called in elegant literary style. This appellation was given them in memory of the traditional origin of the Chinese theater in the imperial palace gardens of a T’ang Dynasty emperor, Ming Huang (Yuen Tsung, 713 756 A.D.), who was a generous patron of the arts in his splendid capital Ch’ang An. This ruler established a college called the Pear Garden for the training in music and dramatics of young actors of both sexes. His plan for court entertainment the emperor had derived, according to legend, from a visit to the moon where he had seen a troupe of performers in the Jade Palace of the lunar emperor. In the annals of the T’ang Dynasty the following is told about the art loving ruler: “Ming Huang was not only passionately fond of music, but he also had a thorough knowledge of its essential principles. He established an academy of music with three hundred students. Ming Huang himself gave them lessons in the Pear Garden; if any of the students sang in poor taste or incorrectly the emperor noted the fault immediately and corrected it sharply. The young girls of the harem, several hundred in number, were later also attached to the academy as students.... On the occasion of the emperor’s birthday the empress ordered them to perform some musical numbers in the Palace of Eternal Life.” The French scholar Bazin in the introduction to his translation of four Chinese plays comments upon this as follows: “Surely it is a great thing that, at a time when the Chinese had as yet no idea of dramatic performances, a man who had founded the institution of the Han Lin (literally ‘The Forest of Pencils’, i.e., The Imperial Academy of Scholars), and who could justly call himself ‘the teacher of his nation’, conceived and carried out single handed a work of art, in which we find for the first time with all its marvelous charm the union of lyric poetry with the drama. This work, fitted to arouse in the souls of the spectators the sentiment of the sublime, could be the product only of a genius.”
