A Test of the Aesthetic Characteristics of Chinese Classical Drama

What we usually call the structure of a drama is, in its essence, an artistic treatment of the whole plot and its movement. In other words, structure is a way for the playwright to grasp the plot aesthetically. If we draw on the new concepts and terms of modern system theory, cybernetics, and Western Gestalt psychology and aesthetics to express it, we can say that the structure of a play is a kind of dynamic and orderly systematic regulation and completion of the plot of the play (and the generation, development and change of a series of characters, events, scenes, situations, lines of action, dramatic conflicts, etc. contained in the plot). In the process of this complex systematic movement, the plot and the structure of the drama actually present the form of mutual causation, mutual exemplification, you have me, I have you. We only consider the convenience of exposition to talk about them separately from the language and text. Based on such a concept, this paper intends to take them as one thing, and then from the perspective of drama aesthetics (or rather, from the perspective of screenwriting application of technical aesthetics), respectively, to summarize and discuss the playwrights on the plot structure of the artistic treatment of the time, should strive to ensure that the four important aesthetic qualities. The so-called beauty of access and fluency is mainly for the arrangement and treatment of the plot in some plays, so it involves the artistic treatment of the dramatic structure. The beauty of fluency is a kind of beauty form with independent aesthetic value shown in the process of drama plot change and development. From the perspective of accepting aesthetics, i.e. audience appreciation, the fluency can satisfy the audience's aesthetic needs in many aspects. First, it can effectively improve the output of aesthetic information. Drama creation is very different from novel creation, it is subject to the strict limitations of the stage performance space, so to achieve "richness and vividness of the plot", it is necessary to take the fluent treatment. Comrade Xia Yan, the famous playwright, pointed out that "economy is the essence of drama" and "slowness and dullness are the fatal enemies of drama". The fluency of a play can not only save the space of the stage performance, but also eliminate the slowness and dullness of the play. This is mainly because fluency can increase the life capacity of a play, improve the efficiency of the progress of the plot and the utilization of the stage space. Secondly, the smooth progress of the plot is conducive to the creation and accumulation of aesthetic tension in the process of the audience watching the play. Especially in our traditional opera, the plot progression mode which is commonly adopted in the looped and tightly linked type or this and that type or high-speed condensed type, especially has the aesthetic value of access to smooth beauty, which is conducive to the creation of a sustained and strong sense of urgency and aggressiveness, and is able to grip the audience powerfully from the beginning to the end. In the strong external drama or storytelling to win the film and television drama works, the more required to maintain the audience's sense of tension through the fluent plot processing. Interruptions, looseness and other faults that are not fluent are bound to weaken the audience's aesthetic tension and dissipate their attention. In China's Ming Dynasty opera theory, whether the plot development process is fluent or not has been taken as an important aesthetic criterion. Qi Biaojia criticized He Liang's "Cuidian" when he pointed out that the plot of the play has a lot of "can't Shu turn place"; Xu Fuzhuo criticized the then-famous Pipa Tale of the theater in the book of "Theory of Songs" that "the arrangement of the scene off the eye, and also more oversight"; Li Zhi commented on the "Jade Harmony" when he thought that the plot of the play "has a lot of twists and turns," the plot "has a lot of twists and turns. The plot "has many twists and turns, but when the important place is slow, but the general scattered, so 'not all its beauty'"; here the "can not Shu turn", "omissions "; here, the "inability to shift", "omission", "slow", "scattered" and so on, are the specific manifestations of the plot due to obstacles and become stagnant and unsmooth. Wang Xuide in the "law of the song" is clearly put forward the plot progress must strive to "smooth" proposition of the Qing dynasty great dramatist Li Yu from the overall scale of the plot of the whole play to focus on the playwrights should be the structure of the plot of the "full scale" design before writing, "should not be rushed to the brush," "slow", "scattered" and so on, are due to obstacles to become stagnant specific manifestations. "It is not advisable to write in haste, but to "put your hand in front of you so that you can write quickly". Such a way of writing, of course, is conducive to the plot of the whole play to flow down, a breath of fresh air. Li Yu was firmly against the writing method of not having a "game", but only "laying out section by section" and "breeding paragraph by paragraph", believing that even if he could write some good dramatic passages, they could only be like "scattered gold and broken pieces of gold". It is believed that even if some good dramatic passages can be written in this way, they can only be like "scattered gold and broken jade", inevitably like "one of the human body, there are countless traces of continuity, and the blood for the middle of the obstruction. The so-called fluent, in the plot progress in the specific performance, or a central event in the character of a series of actions to promote the rapid development, or by an event naturally paved the way, leading to the transition to another event, or the old and new conflicts subconsciously alternating alternation ...... everything is carried out as a natural and not hard and abrupt as a flow of water. The first time I saw this, it was a very hard and abrupt. In this regard, many immortal and successful works in China's classical operas have provided us with valuable creative experience. Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion unfolds the whole plot of the play from the word "love". The heroine, Liniang, is dreaming of love, sick of love, sick and dying, dying and coming back to life, until the final happy ending in which all the lovers are reunited, which is tightly held onto the word "love" and is completed in one breath. The story is a perfect one. The famous Yuan dynasty miscellaneous drama "Zhao's Orphan", the initial conflict between the two sides is a good minister Tu Shuanjia and Cheng Ying, Bu Feng struggle for the orphans, the orphans were stolen out of the palace door, the conflict has shifted to the search for the orphans and hiding the orphans of the new focus, Cheng Ying and Gongsun pestle and mortar plan, the conflict has shifted to Tu Shuanjia and Gongsun hold the day of the struggle between the two sides, and finally the Han Turk to return to the court, the conflict is again in the Tu Shuanjia and Cheng Ying, Han Turk, the orphans between. The conflict is again between Tu Gan Jia and Cheng Ying, Han Turk and the orphans. The whole plot around the "orphans" to start, presenting a continuous flow of grand momentum, so that the audience can not help but watch the whole play to produce a sense of pain and pleasure. Second, the cohesion of the beauty of the string must have a cohesive and powerful string throughout the central thread of the play. If this central thread is compared to the "vine", then, all the people, things, headaches and so on are the "melon" on the vine. Li Yu once demanded that the creation of a legend should be "one play after another, one person on top of another. Make sure to carry on the previous and the next, the bloodline is connected. Then, what should be relied on to "connect", "top", "carry" and "connect"? Li Yu believes that it is necessary to rely on the "establishment of the mastermind", "always no two things, through only one person". Tang Xianzu, on the other hand, advocated that the "thousands of threads" should be tightly linked into "a single strand" through the "intertwining of the eyes of the passers-by" in order to overcome the "disease of fragmentation". "This is the only way to overcome the disease of fragmentation. Cao Yu also said, "Fifteen Guan is well written! It's good because it's written from a single center." Stanislavski, on the other hand, created the theories such as "coherent action" and "supreme task", from which coherent characters, coherent conflicts, coherent events, coherent imagery, and coherent props (e.g., the fan in Goldoni's comedy The Fan, the fan in the Yuan zaogang's The Sweatshirt, the fan in the Yuan's comedy The Sweatshirt, the fan in the Yuan's comedy The Sweatshirt) were created. The Fan in Goldoni's comedy The Fan, The Sweatshirt in the Yuan miscellany, and so on), and other new terminology. This is undoubtedly to emphasize the "centripetal" nature of the play, i.e., to use a central clue to make all aspects of the play, all kinds of components are attached, so that the plot of the whole play is connected and cohesive into a rigorous organic whole. From the ancient and modern Chinese and foreign theatrical creations, we can find that what is the string of clues, but also because of the style of dramatic works, style, genre and so on different and have their own focus. Generally speaking, to write the main plot of the drama such as "melodrama", often with an external central event as a string of clues; to write the character's inner life of the drama such as "psychological drama", "lyrical drama "The internal action refers to the thoughts and intentions of the characters, their inner activities and all the psychological processes they undergo in the play" (Guriev, Fundamentals of Directing, p. 1). (Guriev: Fundamentals of Directing, p. 188, China Theater Publishing House, 1960 edition). The centripetal point-and-line structure adopted in the creation of traditional Chinese opera is particularly conducive to achieving cohesion and coherence. For example, traditional opera generally adopts a continuous structure, dividing the whole drama into many large and small scenes, each of which is a "point", and each of which must have a central event or a major dramatic action. And the playwright also according to its central event or the main dramatic action and for each scene "name". For example, in The Story of the Western Wing, there are "Touring the Palace", "'Making a Difference in the Dojo", "Temple Police", "Lai Marriage ", "Listening to the Qin", "Haunted Jane", "Lai Jane", "Reward Jane", "Marriage", "Cuffing the Red", "Farewell", "Frightened Dreams", "The Divine Test", "The Divine Test", "The Divine Test", "The Divine Test", "The Divine Test", "The Divine Test", "The Divine Test". The many "points" of "Divine Examination", "Marriage Competition", and "Reunion" are all connected by a central thread that runs through the whole play, i.e., the love between Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying, and the love between the hero and heroine. Cui Yingying's love for each other. Each "point" is a specific stage in the development of the play's plot, and all these central points are connected to a "central line", which becomes the center of the play. Then all the people, events, conflicts and so on in each scene and even in the whole play are concentrated and closely surrounded by the center of each scene (i.e., the "point") and the center of the whole play (i.e., the "line"), which forms a type of structure with a strong centripetal force. This type of structure can be said to be unique and superior to ensure the overall operation of the plot of the whole play. Therefore, this traditional cohesive coherent plot structure has always been regarded as the opera history of the authentic, she, almost including the history of the opera since the creation of all the traditional opera. Third, the continuous beauty of the first, to do the articulation of the illumination. Li Yu pointed out that: "illuminate the ambush, more than illuminate a person, ambush, where this play is famous into the things involved, and before this said the words, section fear to think", "a section of the false sparse, the whole piece of the cracks out of the carries on." To this end, Li Yu also further to the lotus root and cocoon as an analogy, "in the case of the love affair is completely irrelevant, there is a chain of fine bamboo shoots in which, see later to know its wonderful; such as lotus root in the uncut when the first growth of the dark silk to wait for the silk in the complex into the cocoon of the essence of the knowledge". The chain of fine bamboo shoots, the dark threads of lotus root, like ambush ("ambush"), the audience watching the play at first will not realize that there is a chain of interlocking threads, until the end of the more and more to appreciate the subtleties of its inexpressible. As for the specific methods of articulation, there are many different ones. Li Yu believes that the whole play must have "interspersed with the contact of the Guanmu", many of the Chinese opera or the second act of the play before the majority of such interspersed with the role of liaison. Li Zhi commented on "Pipa" is proposed to write the play to "over the wonderful", the so-called over, that is, the transition of the articulation of the same, also known as "lead" and "ferry"; Liu Xizai in the "Art" emphasizes the importance of writing a good play. Art" in Liu Xizai emphasizes the "section" and "tendons" of writing good works, seize the "section", the plot paragraphs will appear clear, seize the "tendons When the "tendons" are grasped, the plots and passages will appear distinct, and when the "tendons" are grasped, the plots and passages can be linked together to become a "coherent" whole. Secondly, we should strive to make the vertical development of the plot of the whole play to maintain the inherent relationship of cause and effect. Aristotle in the "Poetics" in the tragedy of a pile of events should be both unexpected and causal, that is, the development of the law of necessity and the law of the natural; Horace in the "Poetry" in the tragedy of the plot must be "all the Department of the interlocking, integrated"; Diderot emphasized that the plot and the plot to maintain a "Diderot emphasized the need to maintain the relationship between the plot and the plot, which coincides with the aesthetic point of view of "following each other before and after" put forward by Zhuangzi two thousand years ago in China. The essence of both "follow each other" and "follow each other" is to emphasize the causal relationship between plots. That is to say, thing A is the "cause" of thing B, and thing B is the "effect" of thing A. And as the plot continues to develop, thing B is transformed into the "cause" of thing C. ...... and so on, each event has the dual role of both preceding and following, making a series of events mutually causal, and the whole process of plot development is a complete "cause and effect line". Playwrights should strive to discover this organic relationship of cause and effect between events, otherwise, only relying on some superficial structural techniques to pull some unrelated things together, that is not able to withstand the scrutiny at the same time will never make the play have a real continuous beauty. Kong Shangren cautioned playwrights in The Peach Blossom Fan to never "pull from the east and pull from the west, and then put together a play. This is a lesson of failure in the history of theater creation that we can remember. In the Ming Dynasty, Zheng Zhizhen's play, "The Filial Piety of Meilian", many plays with no causal connection to each other, such as "The Mute Carrying the Madness", "The King's Maiden Scolding the Chicken", "Sifan Descending from the Mountain", "The Three Craftsmen Struggling for the Seat", "The Monk and the Taoist Making Fortunes", etc., are reluctantly linked together in a performance. Although the author at the end of the arrangement of a "thunder beat ten evils", so that the front of all the demolition of the play in the bad guys are - a - punished, as the front of the play as a "general ending", but still can not make these folds of the play link into an organic whole. An organic whole. Later, folk performances, the people only from the specially selected "Sifan down the mountain", "Wangwu scolding chicken" and so on as an independent play to play, and the whole "Meilian filial piety" plays no one asked for. For example, in the late Qing Dynasty, Yang Sishou criticized Chen Houfu's adaptation of Dream of Red Mansions in his Poetry Series, saying that the plot structure of Cao Xueqin's original work was very compact, with "continuous breaks, continuous but not continuous, with ups and downs, with the beauty of a snake and a snake's thread". However, when adapting the original novel into a play, he only isolated some events from the original novel and inserted them into each play, and then used the technique of "forcible linking", i.e., "inserting another bingbai after the main text of each play to cause the next play; at the beginning of the next play, he also used the bingbai to echo the previous play, and then the main text, which is quite similar to that of the writer of the time! This is quite similar to that of the writers of the time, who used to make cutting questions and hooks with the intention of linking them up, but it is not the right track. Chen Houfu relies on Binbai to connect the upper and lower out, although on the surface it seems to be a hook, but inside it is still a pile of "scattered gold and jade" that lacks causal connection. Once again, the method of writing this and that, or the latter wave pushing the former wave, can especially make the plot of the drama in the development of showing the full and strong beauty of continuity. Especially in the "this" and "other", "ambush" and "rise", "after the wave" and "before the wave". between "this" and "other", "ambush" and "rise", "back wave" and "front wave", there is often a "negation of the negation" of the relationship, and some opera theorists call it "positive and negative" or "positive and negative collocation". Some opera theorists also call it "positive and negative collocation" or "positive and negative collocation". This kind of writing method is good for all the playwrights in the history of Chinese opera, and it is also a typical paradigm that the Chinese people are happy to see. Take the Peking Opera "Legend of the White Snake" adapted by Comrade Tian Han as an example. Starting from "Touring the Lake" and "Marriage", it is written that White Snake and Xu Xian become a happy couple, and the hero and heroine get happiness; then there are "Stealing the Treasury", "Silver Scourge" and "Sentenced to Dispatch", in which White Snake steals the silver of the treasury, and Xu Xian is falsely sentenced to a crime, which is a blessing that turns into a scourge. At the end of "Sentenced", Xu Xian is saved, and the misfortune turns to happiness. However, immediately after the three episodes of Checking the White Snake, Talking about Xu, and Wine Changes, Fa Hai points out the origin of the White Snake, and drinks wine at the end of the day, scaring Xu Xian to death, which is a blessing that turns into a curse. After that, there are "Guarding the Mountain", "Stealing Grass" and "Cutting Medicine", which write about the White Snake saving Xu Xian's life, which is the difference between life and death. Next is "Going Up the Mountain", in which Xu Xian is tricked by Fa Hai to go up the Golden Mountain, only to be reunited and separated again. And then "Crossing the River", "Sow", "Water Fight", "Escape from the Mountain", "Broken Bridge", write them through the struggle with Fahai and from separation to reunion. And then "Sea Compulsion", "Defeat of the Green" and "Golden Bowl" are written about the two of them joining together and then leaving again. At the end of the piece, "Crying Tower" and "Pouring Tower" are about the two of them leaving and meeting again. Mao Shengshan, an opera critic in the early Qing Dynasty, also called this "negation of negation" writing method "positive ambush" ("positive pen") and "reverse fall" ("reverse fall"). "("reverse fall", "reverse stroke"). In fact, that is, through the smooth and reverse, sadness and joy, separation and harmony, disaster and blessing, life and death, success and failure, prosperity and decline, gain and loss of strong contrast, stumbling and sharp positive and negative ratio, so that the development of the plot of the drama more enhanced the aesthetic effect of continuous. Fourth, the beauty of rapid and rapid theatrical art stage time and space limitations and its basic law of creation, requiring playwrights must be rapid and rapid to push the plot forward. Holodov in the book "dramatic structure" in Lev Tolstoy's famous novel "War and Peace" as an example of the novel and the play in the creation of different characteristics of a comparison, and then pointed out, "of course, the playwright can not use the 'slow action' kind of method, and this method is very normal for novelists. is quite normal for novelists." In his book The Method of Playwriting, the British theater theorist William Archer also pointed out that, unlike the novelist, "the playwright deals with rapid and startling changes, which the Greeks called 'sudden turns'." Thus, Archer calls theater "an art of radical change" and the novel "an art of gradual change" because the novel is not limited by time and space, and the author can depict the slow process of plot development with ease and ease. "It is this slowness of the developmental process that distinguishes a typical novel from a typical play." Archer demanded that playwrights be adept at the use of rapidity and clarity in unfolding their plots, which he considered to be a "drama-rich method." He also cited Shakespeare's Othello and Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf as examples of playwrights who "dealt with events in a brisk, non-drawn-out manner, thus giving the play a flavor peculiar to the drama." Traditional Chinese opera seems to emphasize the rapidity of the plot. In the first half of White Fan, a four-fold miscellaneous opera written by Wu Mei, a modern opera writer and theorist, it is written that Wang Min and his maid, Laoshi, met in the garden and engaged; in the second half, it is written that the two of them met in the garden at night when they were seen by the old mother; in the third half, it is written that Wang Min's sister-in-law beat up Fangzhi, and when he came to her rescue, she had already been sent back to her home. When Wang Min runs to Fang Zi's home, Fang Zi is near death. In the fourth fold, it is written that Wang Min misses Fang Zi and meets with Fang Zi in his dream (Fang Zi's soul is on the stage), but wakes up in pain. The whole play has a general suspense (or a number of local suspense appearing one after another) leading the way in the front, coupled with such a rapid progress of the plot, the playwright does not need to worry about not being able to catch the audience. In order to develop the plot more rapidly and quickly, we would like to suggest a few common problems that affect the speed of the plot, so that our playwrights can pay more attention to them in their future creative practice. One of them is piling up details. Good and necessary details and appropriate detailing can make the plot vivid, but also conducive to the characterization of the fine carving. Because of this, some playwrights go to extremes, abusing details too much, leading to detail piling. Especially when this kind of detail piling occurs in the secondary characters and secondary plot line, its negative impact is even more serious, not only make the main plot slow down, but also may make the whole plot stagnant. The famous Russian playwright Chekhov once pointed out in a letter to a beginner, "You write the progress of the plot too slowly, because there is little action and many details, and those details pile up. ......" Unlike the detailing in novels, theater works can only select those details that can powerfully move the plot forward quickly. Second, there are words (singing) without drama. Drama relies on the characters' lines - dialogues, monologues, singing and so on - to promote the plot; whether there is drama or not, and whether there is much drama or little drama, is mostly reflected through "words" and "singing". Characters must do words (singing) in the play, out of the play, with the characters to say (or sing) out, the plot should be synchronized at the same time to move forward. Therefore, a basic skill of writing a good dialog or singing is "to make the plot has been rapidly forward, avoiding a Yang Yang followed by a chattering speech, always talking about the same thing without any action" (the famous German theater theorist about Eislinger). In some of the less mature "exploratory plays" of recent years in China, there often exists the drawback of hindering the rapid progress of the plot with a series of abstract discussions. In some plays, the quarrels between characters with different opinions are both intense and lengthy, but we cannot see any great progress in the plot due to these quarrels and arguments. Sometimes this problem is also difficult to avoid in the writing of famous writers. For example, Guo Moruo's historical drama "Qu Yuan", the whole play in the first act of the long pages, so that Qu Yuan to the maid Juan and Song Yu talk to the depth of the wisdom of the language itself and philosophical discourse, its poetry and literary grace are admirable, however, from the point of view of the plot needs to be quickly unfolded, the degree of redundancy and redundancy is also serious. Third, inappropriate psychological description. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century novels of Western Europe, delicate and subtle psychological descriptions, even if they are very long, are y attractive to the reader. If you do the same in a drama, the result will be contrary to your wishes. Psychological descriptions in drama can only take place on the basis of the rapid development of the external plot. When the external plot needs to quickly unfold, the insertion of a large section of the character's inner monologue, or a long lyrical cantata, both weakened the momentum of the plot development, but also frustrated the audience's aesthetic interest. Imagine, in Wu Sung tiger, in favor of going to capitalize on the characters of the "stream of consciousness"; in the "fork in the road" such a tense external plot to win the martial arts play, hard to both characters on a few psychological description of the big singing, then, no matter how much the actor sings and reads and plays all good, but also still inevitably a great deal of fun. Fourth, some movie and television drama works make people feel the climax is not high or even no climax, which is directly related to the climax of the plot before the progress is too slow. Diderot in "on the art of theater Chuan. Repeatedly emphasized, "the main point is to make the development of the plot faster and faster," which is precisely in order to be able to cause the climax of the water to the channel. "The climax cannot rise from the ground, but before it appears, there needs to be a process of accumulating momentum like a wild rule, and the rhythm of the play gradually shows the wind getting tighter and tighter. The playwrights who are rich in creative experience are well aware of this. The famous American contemporary playwright O'Neill in the "Jones King" in order to bake the plot more and more fast progress, deliberately arranged on the people in the pursuit of the Jones King knocked out the tambourine sound and make it through the whole play, and the drums also made strict requirements, "the drums from a normal beat, and then gradually strengthened until the presence of the heartbeat of every one of the people and the drums and the corresponding and crazy! ......." Fifth, the problem of dividing the act into separate scenes. The division of scenes in Chinese opera seems much more free and flexible than the division of scenes in foreign theater, but if it is not grasped well, dividing the scenes too much and too fragmented, it will also fragment the overall plot. This drawback is more prominent in the Ming and Qing dynasties in the legend, and the Yuan miscellaneous plays generally only four fold a wedge, which in the division of the field to the rapid progress of the plot provides a favorable precondition. In recent years, China's theater stage on the emergence of some of the "multi-scene", "no scene", "time and space interlaced" and other exploratory plays should also pay attention to, do not because of too many scenes and time and space jumping with exhaustion and destroy the whole plot. Do not because of too many sub-scenes and time and space jumping with the exhaustion and destroy the plot of the whole play to progress quickly and brightly. V. Conclusion. The four aesthetic qualities discussed above, although mainly from the playwright's desk at one time in terms of creation, however, they are equally important to the artistic treatment of the director's stage performances (director's aesthetics), and to the audience's appreciation of the practice (the audience acceptance of aesthetics or the audience's aesthetic psychology), are also of great significance in guiding the work, it can be asserted that all the plays, films and TV dramas that are equipped with these aesthetic qualities will inevitably be received by the general public. It can be asserted that all plays, movies and TV dramas that fully possess these aesthetic qualities will inevitably be favored by the audience, because they are in line with the aesthetic tastes and appreciation habits that have been historically formed by the audience groups of all classes and types in our country. Incidentally, the author wrote this article, when the CCTV in the daily prime-time broadcast TV series "Yongzheng Dynasty", the drama up to forty-four episodes, but we not only do not suspect that it is long, and the more you look up to love to see, the more you want to see. Especially the playwright-director in the original novel has been drastically compressed on the basis of the deletion of the cut, and then after the adaptation of the first draft of 53 episodes further compressed to the current 44 episodes. Tolerating the pain of cutting love for a while, the drama has managed to combine the four excellent aesthetic qualities listed above in this article into one, and has thus won the lasting and widespread acclaim of the audience. This kind of courage to cut the spirit of love, and over the years in the creation of television dramas exist in the feet of small shoes, the longer the longer the bad tendency compared to, can be said to be invaluable to. May our playwrights and directors have such a spirit of artistic excellence, to create more better and more beautiful film and television drama artistic excellence dedicated to our great age and the general audience.