CHINESE THEATRE The Chinese drama, as it had existed from ancient times up to the time of the Revolution in 1911, was a continuous develop ment from simple primitive forms to a very complex and elaborate one. (See DRAMA, CHINESE.) Such evidence as can be found in the Chinese classics makes it certain that the origins were in ancestor worship and religious dancing, and in the acrobats and clowns who entertained the courts, presenting an obvious analogy to the drama of the middle ages. Added to this, we have the evidence of the engraved reliefs of the Wu tombs and of such stelae as that in the Boston museum (dated A.D. 529). Also the numerous grave figurines which present a variety of actors and dancers, giving visual proof of the type of dancing engaged in in the Six Dynasties and the T'ang dynasty. Traditionally, the acting of stories is attributed to the Han dynasty. References are made to stories accompanied by song and dance in the North Ch'i dynasty. The use of animal and demon masks was probably primitive and early, but legend ascribes the origin of the terrify ing warrior masks to the prince of Lan Ling who' had a face so beautiful that he had to invent a "false face" of carved wood in order to frighten the enemy. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Chinese have developed painted faces which are the equivalent of the Japanese No masks. (See MASKS.) In the T'ang dynasty the Emperor Ming Huang was famous as a patron of the arts of drama and dancing. He established the "Pear Garden," a court institute of music, dancing and acting, and established a similar institute for the training of females, a refer ence which seems to indicate that the 19th century tradition of the segregation of sexes in dramatic companies was an old and persistent one.
dramatic literature is lost ; the theory is that Chinese htterateurs under a barbarian rule turned their genius to an art which they considered inferior. This they did partly as a matter of politics, partly for diversion and partly out of contempt.
From this period the names of plays and dramatists are pre served. (Among the dramatists were Wang Shih-fu, Shih Chun-mei, Kuan Han-sheng, Man, Ma Chih ytian, f-AjA, and Ch'iao Lifu, lr4.) Sure as it seems that the drama as serious literature was at its height during this period, the question of how much of the theatre of that period was an innovation and how much was the elaboration of straight tradi tion is a completely open one. The opinion of the author is that the tradition, however tricked out, was not changed. Dancers of the loth century move from posture to posture which are identical with those of the T'ang dynasty grave figurines and there are many analogies to the No drama of Japan which have never been properly looked into, notably similar conventions, and, in the male characters, a similar use of intoned chanting. (See NO DRAMA.) The drama continued to flourish under the Ming dynasty and apparently did not give way to a new form until the middle of the Ch'ing period when an easier and more popular style became the mode. The classical drama, or k'un rtilli has persisted to the present day but is largely kept up by scholarly amateur so cieties. There are a few great professional singers of the classical drama, and the great popular actors usually include a few classical roles in their repertoires, but for the most part dramatic per formances are in the popular (erk huang) Z mode developed under the Manchus. In the third decade of the loth century the modernists were attacking the stage tradition with everything else that has been great in China and have fallen into weak imita tion of the western dramatic forms, so far with very little effect on the old theatre except that the fashionable actors are deserting the traditional type of stage and are taking to western stages, painted scenery and spotlights.