On the Aesthetic Characteristics of China's Classical Drama

What we usually call drama structure is essentially an artistic treatment of the whole drama festival and its movement process. In other words, structure is a way for playwrights to grasp the plot from an aesthetic point of view. If we use modern system theory, cybernetics and western gestalt psychology aesthetics for reference, then we can also say that drama structure is a dynamic and orderly system regulation and gestalt construction of drama plot (as well as a series of characters, events, scenes, situations, action lines, drama conflicts, etc.). In the process of this complex system movement, the drama plot and drama structure actually present a situation of mutual cause and effect, mutual representation, you have me and I have you. We only consider the convenience of discussion, so we can separate them in language and writing. Based on such a concept, this paper intends to treat them as one thing, and then summarizes and discusses four important aesthetic qualities that playwrights should strive to ensure when dealing with plot structure artistically from the perspective of drama aesthetics (or from the perspective of applying technical aesthetics in scriptwriting). First, the beauty of fluency The so-called beauty of fluency is mainly aimed at the arrangement and handling of plots in some plays. Therefore, it involves the artistic treatment of drama structure. The beauty of fluency is an aesthetic form with independent aesthetic value in the process of drama plot change and development. From the perspective of reception aesthetics, that is, audience appreciation, fluency can meet various aesthetic needs of the audience. First of all, it can effectively improve the output of aesthetic information. Drama creation is very different from novel creation, and it is strictly limited by space when performing on the stage. Therefore, in order to achieve "the richness and vividness of the plot", smooth methods must be adopted. Comrade Xia Yan, a famous playwright, pointed out that "economy is the original meaning of drama" and "slowness and dullness are the deadly enemies of drama". Moreover, fluency can not only save space for stage performance, but also eliminate redundancy and boredom. This is mainly because fluency can increase the living capacity of a drama, improve the progress efficiency of the drama plot and the utilization of stage space. Secondly, the smooth plot progress is conducive to creating and accumulating the aesthetic tension of the audience during the theater. In particular, the plot development mode widely used in traditional Chinese opera has great aesthetic value, which is conducive to creating a strong sense of urgency and aggressive momentum, and can effectively capture the audience from beginning to end. In the film and television drama works that win with strong external drama or story, the director needs to maintain the tension of the audience through smooth plot processing. The appearance of interruption and looseness will inevitably weaken the aesthetic tension of the audience and distract their attention. In the drama theory of Ming Dynasty, whether the plot develops smoothly has always been regarded as an important aesthetic standard. When Qi Biaojia criticized He Liang's Cui Yue, he pointed out that there were many inconveniences in the plot festival. In the book Qu Lun, Xu Fuzhuo criticized the famous drama Pipa at that time as "ostentation and extravagance, but also many omissions"; When Li Zhi commented on the Jade Collection, he thought that the plot festival was "full of twists and turns, slow when it was important, and scattered when it was scattered, so it was' incomplete'"; The words "unable to turn smoothly", "omission", "slow" and "scattered" mentioned here are all concrete manifestations of the plot becoming slow due to obstacles. In Qu Lu, Wang Su clearly pointed out that the plot progress must be smooth. Li Yu, a great dramatist in Qing Dynasty, focused on the overall scale of the whole plot festival, and warned the playwright to design the "full scale" of the plot structure before writing, "not to rush into it", but to "stand by and learn later". This way of writing is of course beneficial to the whole drama festival. Li Yu resolutely opposes the writing method of "telling stories paragraph by paragraph" and "breeding them paragraph by paragraph", and thinks that even if some good drama paragraphs can be written in this way, they can only be like "scattered gold and broken jade", and it is inevitable that "a person with countless intermittent impressions is stuck in it". The so-called smoothness is reflected in the progress of the plot, or a central event is rapidly launched under the impetus of a series of actions of the characters, or an event is naturally paved, leading to the transition to another event, or the subtle alternation of old and new contradictions and conflicts ... Everything goes smoothly and naturally, without being abrupt. In this respect, many immortal successes in China's classical operas provide us with valuable creative experience. Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion begins with the word "love". The heroine, She Liniang, dreamed of love, from love to illness, from illness to death, and then came back to life, until the last couple finally had a happy ending, clutching the word "love" in one go. In the Yuan Dynasty's zaju The Orphan of Zhao, the two sides of the initial conflict were the battle between the good minister and the orphan. After the orphans were stolen from the palace, the conflict turned to a new focus of finding orphans and hiding them. After Cheng Ying and Gongsun fought to the death, the conflict became a struggle with Gongsun Chiri. Finally, Han Dai returned to North Korea, and there were conflicts between Tu'an Gu and Cheng Ying, and between Han Dai and orphans. The whole story revolves around the orphan, showing an endless grand momentum, which makes the audience feel a sense of agitation when watching the complete drama. Second, there should be a central clue that runs through the whole play and has strong cohesion. If this central clue is compared to a vine, then all the people, events, clues and so on in the play are melons on this vine. Li Yu once demanded that the creation of legends should be "one after another, and one person should top one." Make sure it's connected. It's connected. "So, what is the basis of" connection ","top ","bearing "and" connection "? Li Yu believes that "there are always two things, and only one person runs through them". Tang Xianzu, on the other hand, advocated that "countless ties" should be closely connected into a "strand" through "passing through the eye" to overcome "disorder". Cao Yu once said that the Fifteen Biographies are well written! The good news is that a center has fallen. "stanislavski, on the other hand, created the theory of" concerted action "and" supreme task ",which resulted in new terms such as consistent characters, consistent conflicts, consistent events, consistent images and consistent props (such as fans in Gordoni's comedy Fan, T-shirts in Yuan zaju Together with Sweaters, etc.). This is undoubtedly to emphasize the centripetal nature of the play, that is, to use a central clue to connect all aspects and components of the play with each other, so that the whole plot section can be condensed into a rigorous organic whole. From the drama creation in ancient and modern times, we can find that the clues are different because of the different styles, styles and genres of drama works. Generally speaking, dramas that focus on plots, such as "melodrama", often take an external central event as a clue; "Psychodrama", "lyric drama" and other dramas mainly describe the inner life of the characters, taking the "inner action" of the characters as the running clue. " Internal action refers to the thoughts and intentions of the characters in the script at the scene, their inner activities and all the psychological processes they have experienced "(Guriev: Fundamentals of Directors, p. 188, China Drama Publishing House, 65438. China's traditional opera creation adopts the structural mode of combining centripetal points and lines, which is particularly beneficial to the connection and continuation. For example, China traditional operas generally adopt a continuous field structure, which divides the whole drama into many large and small fields, each field is a "point", and each "point" must have a central event or major dramatic action. In addition, the playwright also "named" each scene according to the central event or main dramatic action of each scene. For example, you can visit the temple, make trouble in the Dojo, be a temple policeman, stay married, listen to the piano, be a treasure, stay a treasure, pay a treasure, get married, copy red, leave, dream and be a god. Each "point" is a specific stage in the development of the whole drama festival. All these central points are connected into a "midline" and become the center of the whole drama. Then all the people, events and conflicts in each scene and the whole drama are concentrated, closely surrounding the center of each scene (that is, the point) and the center of the whole drama (that is, the line). This type of structure is unique and is to win the game. Therefore, this traditional cohesive plot structure has always been regarded as authentic in the history of traditional Chinese opera, which includes almost all the creations of traditional Chinese opera since its own history. Third, continuous beauty must first be convergent and caring. Li Yu pointed out: "If there is more than one person in the mirror, there must be an ambush. What is famous in this play is related to what has been said before and after. " "A holiday is sparse, and the whole article is flawed. "To this end, Li Yu further compared the lotus root with the cocoon." In completely unrelated places, there are also serial thin bamboo shoots that are better than them, which will be known later; For example, if the lotus root is not cut, dark silk will grow first, and it will be known that it is the essence of cocoon after the silk is entangled. "Serial thin bamboo shoots, long black with lotus roots, are like foreshadowing ("ambush "). At first, the audience won't notice that there are interlocking and interrelated filaments in the play, and finally they gradually realize the subtlety of its long story. As for the specific methods of cohesion and reference, there are various. Li Yu believes that the whole drama must have the purpose of "interspersed communication", and most scenes in China traditional operas have this function of interspersed communication. When commenting on The Story of Pipa, Li Zhi suggested that writing plays should be "wonderful". The so-called excessive connection, that is, transitional connection, is also called "leading" and "crossing". Liu Xizai emphasized the "festival" and "tendon" in his Introduction to Art.. When he grasps the "stanza", the plot paragraphs become clear, and when he grasps the "tendon", he can connect all the plot paragraphs into a whole. Secondly, it is to strive to maintain the inherent causal relationship in the vertical development of the whole drama festival. Aristotle argued in Poetics that the successive events in tragedy should be unexpected and causal, that is, the inevitable law and possible law of balancing the development of things; Horace demanded in "The Art of Poetry" that the tragic plot must be "the parts are interlocking and integrated"; Diderot, on the other hand, stressed the need to keep the connection between plots, which coincides with China's aesthetic view of "advancing and retreating in moderation" put forward by Zhuangzi two thousand years ago. The essence of "companionship" and "interlocking" is to emphasize the causal inheritance between plots. That is to say, event A is the cause of event B, and event B is the result of event A, and with the continuous development of the plot, event B is transformed into the cause of event C, and so on, each event has a dual role of connecting the past with the future, making a series of events mutually causal, and the development process of the whole plot is a complete "causal line". Playwrights should try their best to explore the inherent organic causal inheritance relationship between events, otherwise, if we just tie some irrelevant things together with some superficial structural techniques, it will not stand scrutiny and will never make the drama truly continuous. Kong warned the playwright in Peach Blossom Fan not to "drag the east and pull the west, and then make contributions". This is a failure lesson that we should remember in the history of drama creation. Mou Lianxiao, Zheng Zhizhen's play in Ming Dynasty, is a performance that is barely connected with many folding dramas that have no causal relationship with each other, such as Dumb Back Madness, Wang Po's Scolding Chicken, Wanting to Go Down the Mountain, Three Artisans Fighting for Seats, and Monks and Taoists Giving alms. Although the author arranged a "ten evils of thunder" at the end, so that all the bad guys in the previous play were punished as a "summary bureau" for the previous play, it was still impossible to connect these plays into an organic whole. Later, in folk performances, most people only deliberately chose "Want to Go Down the Mountain" and "Wang Po Scold Chicken" as independent repertoires, while the whole drama "Moulianxiao" was neglected. For another example, in the late Qing Dynasty, Yang Sishou criticized Chen Houfu's adaptation of A Dream of Red Mansions, saying that Cao Xueqin's original plot structure was very compact, "intermittent, connected together, ups and downs, with its own wonderful gray line. "But when it is adapted into a script, it just isolates some events from the original novel and inserts them into each play, and then adopts the technique of" strong intervention ",that is," after each paragraph, another guest white is inserted, resulting in the next paragraph; At the beginning of the opening ceremony, Binbaiyao was used to answer questions. From the beginning of the text, it was quite similar to the writers at that time, with the intention of linking and investigating the wrong track. " Chen Houfu made a guest appearance in series from top to bottom. Although seemingly related, he is still a pile of "scattered gold and broken jade" lacking internal causal connection. Thirdly, adopting the writing method of "one after another" or "one after another" can especially make the drama plot show full and strong continuous beauty in its development. In particular, there is a negative negative relationship between "this" and "that", "crouching" and "rising", "back wave" and "front wave", which is also called "positive and negative alternation" or "positive and negative collocation" by some opera theorists. This writing style is good for all playwrights in the history of traditional Chinese opera in China, and it is also a typical paradigm loved by the general public in China. Take the Peking Opera Legend of the White Snake adapted by Comrade Tian Han as an example. Starting from "Lake Tour" and "Marriage", it is written that the white snake and Xu Xian are married, and the male and female protagonists are happy; Then there are treasure theft, silver disaster and dispatch. White Snake stole silver from the state treasury, and Xu Xian was framed. This is a turning point from blessing to disaster. After the "dispatch" ended, Xu Xian was saved and the disaster turned to joy. But then came Cha Bai, Xu Shuo and Jiu Bian, which pointed out the origin of the white snake and exposed Duan Yang's drinking, which scared Xu Xian to death and turned happiness into cotton. Then "Shoushan", "stealing grass" and "cutting medicine". It's about the white snake saving Xu Xian, which is a matter of life and death. After Up the Mountain, Xu Xian was tricked into Jinshan by Fahai, only to be reunited and separated. Then, crossing the river, Suofu, fighting, escaping from the mountain and breaking the bridge, write that after their struggle with Fahai, they moved from separation to integration. Then I wrote The Sea Force, The Lost Youth and The Golden Rice Bowl. The two of them joined in and left. At the end of "Cry Tower" and "Collapse Tower", I will leave and meet again. Mao Shengshan, a drama critic in the early Qing Dynasty, also called this negation of negation "positive writing" and "negative writing" (negative writing, negative writing). In fact, it is through the positive and negative contrast between good and bad, sadness and joy, separation and combination, disaster and blessing, life and death, success and failure, glory and decline, gain and loss. The development of drama plot enhances the lasting aesthetic effect. Fourth, the beauty of quickness and vividness, the stage space-time limitation of dramatic art and its basic creative laws require playwrights to push the plot forward quickly and vividly. In the book "The Structure of Drama", taking lev tolstoy's famous novel "War and Peace" as an example, this paper compares the different characteristics of novels and scripts in creation, and then points out that "it is quite normal for novelists that playwrights cannot use the method of' slow motion'". William Archer, a British drama theorist, also pointed out in his book The Law of Plays that, unlike novelists, "playwrights deal with dramatic changes, which the Greeks call' mutations'". Therefore, Archer called drama "a radical art" and novel "a progressive art", because the novel is not limited by time and space, and the author can calmly describe the slow process of plot development. It is this slow development process that makes a typical novel different from a typical script. Archer asked the playwright to be good at using quick and lively techniques when unfolding the plot, which he thought was a "dramatic method". Taking Shakespeare's Othello and Ibsen's Little Ai Fu You as examples, he pointed out that because the playwright "used a lively but not procrastinating way to deal with the events, the script was full of the unique charm of drama". China's traditional operas seem to emphasize the rapid and vivid development of plots. Wu Mei, a playwright and drama theorist of modern drama, wrote the first verse of the zaju "White Tuan Fan", and Wang Min and the servant girl Lao Zi met in the garden to make love. The second fold, writing that they were seen by their old mother when they met in the garden at night; The third discount is that Wang Min's sister-in-law beat Fang Zi, Wang Min came to save Fang Zi, and Fang Zi has been sent home. When Wang arrived at Fangzi's house, Fangzi was dying. The fourth fold is that Wang Min missed Fang Zi, met Fang Jing in his dream (Fang Zi's soul appeared on the stage), and woke up in pain. The whole play has a general suspense (or several local suspense that appear one after another) leading the way. With such a rapid development of the plot, the playwright does not have to worry about losing the audience. In order to develop the drama plot more quickly and clearly, we especially put forward several common ills that affect the progress of the plot, so that our playwrights can pay more attention to it in their future creative practice. First, pile up the details. Good necessary details and proper description of details can not only make the plot vivid, but also help to carve the characters carefully. Because of this, some playwrights go to extremes and abuse details excessively, which leads to the accumulation of details. Especially when this kind of detail piling occurs on the minor characters and minor plot lines, its negative impact is more serious, which not only slows down the main plot, but also may make the whole plot stagnate. Chekhov, a famous Russian playwright, once pointed out in a letter to beginners, "You write the progress of the plot too slowly, because there are too few actions and too many details, and those details pile up ..." Unlike the description of details in novels, only those details that can effectively promote the rapid progress of the plot can be used in dramatic works. Second, I said (sang) but didn't play. Drama relies on characters' lines-dialogues, monologues, arias, etc. , thus promoting the plot. There is no drama, drama is more than drama, and it is mostly reflected by "speaking" and "singing". There must be something in the words of the characters (singing). As the characters speak (sing), the plot should develop synchronously and proceed synchronously. Therefore, one of the basic skills of writing a dialogue or aria is to "make the plot develop rapidly all the time and avoid just talking about the same thing one after another without any action" (Rajgl, a famous German drama theorist). In recent years, some immature "exploration dramas" in China often have the disadvantages of hindering the rapid development of the plot with a series of abstract arguments. In some plays, the arguments between the different opinions of the characters are fierce and lengthy, but the plot has not made great progress because of these arguments. This disadvantage is sometimes inevitable in the works of famous writers. For example, in Guo Moruo's historical drama Qu Yuan, the first act of the whole drama takes up several pages, allowing Qu Yuan to talk with Yin Juan and Song Yu. The wisdom and philosophical depth of this language itself, its poetry and literary talent are admirable. But judging from the rapid development of the plot here and now, its redundancy is also serious. Third, the psychological description is improper. In the western European novels of 18 and 19 centuries, the delicate psychological description deeply attracts readers even if it is very long. If we do the same thing in a play, the result will definitely be counterproductive. Psychological description in drama can only be carried out on the basis of the rapid development of external plots. When the external plot is in urgent need of rapid development, inserting the inner monologue or long lyric aria of the great man not only weakens the motive force of the plot development, but also dampens the audience's aesthetic taste. Imagine that when Song Wu fights the tiger, he must use the "stream of consciousness" of the characters; A martial arts drama like Sanchakou, which wins by a tense external plot, is difficult to put a few big vocals of psychological description on the characters of both sides, so no matter how the actors sing and act, it is inevitable to spoil it. Fourth, some film and television dramas make people feel that the climax is not high or even there is no climax, which is directly related to the slow progress of the plot before the climax. Diderot in On the Art of Drama. Repeatedly emphasizing that "the most important thing is to make the plot develop faster and faster" is precisely to naturally cause a climax. "Rain is coming, the wind is full of buildings", and the climax cannot be leveled. Before it appeared, there needed to be a process like crazy rules, and its plot rhythm gradually showed an increasingly tense momentum. Everyone with rich creative experience is well aware of the ignorance of drama. In emperor jones, O 'Neill, a famous contemporary American playwright, specially arranged the tambourine beat when the master chased emperor jones, and made it run through the whole play. And he made strict requirements for drum sound. " The drums start from the normal beat and then gradually strengthen until everyone's heartbeat corresponds to the crazy drums ... "... Fifth, the issue of resignation. The division of traditional dramas in China is much more free and flexible than that of foreign dramas. But if you don't grasp it well, you will divide the venue too much and too fragmented, and the whole plot will be fragmented. This kind of malady is more prominent in the legends of Ming and Qing Dynasties, while Yuan Zaju generally has only four folds and one wedge, which provides a favorable premise for the rapid advancement of the plot in the division of the times. In recent years, some exploratory plays such as "More Play", "No Play" and "Staggered Time and Space" have appeared on the stage of China drama. We should also be careful not to ruin the fast and bright process of the whole drama festival because of the fatigue of the time and space jump of Dachuan. V. Conclusion. Although the four aesthetic qualities discussed above mainly come from the playwright's desk creation, they also have important guiding significance for the director's stage performance art treatment (director aesthetics) and the appreciation practice of the audience (audience acceptance aesthetics or Japanese audience aesthetic psychology). It can be asserted that all dramas, movies and TV plays with these aesthetic characteristics are bound to be favored by the broad audience, because they are in line with all walks of life in China. By the way, when I wrote this stupid article, it happened that CCTV broadcasted the TV series Yongzheng Dynasty in prime time every day. There are 44 episodes of this drama, but we don't think it is too long, but the more we watch it, the more we want to see it. In particular, on the basis of greatly deleting the original novel, the director of the play further deleted the first draft of 53 episodes to the present 44 episodes. I endured the pain of giving up love for a while, but I succeeded in combining the four excellent aesthetic qualities listed in the above article, and thus won lasting and extensive praise from the audience. This spirit of courage and being good at giving up what you love is really commendable compared with the bad tendency of being too big and too long in TV drama creation for many years. I hope that our screenwriters and directors can also have such an artistic spirit of Excellence and create more better and more beautiful film and television dramas for our great era and the vast audience.