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Chapter 9 Zhu Quan 朱權 (1378–1448) may have been a loser in early

Zhu Quan, A Prince who Ming politics but arguably won lasting renown through the
role he played in musical transformations in the empire’s
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Changed Ming Musical second century. Manipulated to support his elder brother
Zhu Di’s 朱棣 (1360–1424) capture of the Ming throne, and
History dispatched in 1403 to live as a prince (wang 王) under court
surveillance in peripheral Nanchang 南昌 in Jiangxi
province, Zhu Quan could not act on centre stage in Ming
culture and politics during the critical years of 1400–50.
Joseph S.C. Lam However, he exercised his princely power and resources to
continue and change the performing arts of the period,
shaping their subsequent developments and interpretations.
He changed Ming musical history.
Zhu Quan is now a seminal figure in Chinese cultural
and musical history. Many scholars have examined his
biography and legacy, and in particular, his treatises on
early Ming drama and music. Few, however, have discussed
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how he actually received, developed and transmitted the
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performing arts of his time. Many questions remain to be
answered. For example, what and how do his palace poetry
(gongci 宮詞), dramatic scripts, theoretical treatises and qin 琴
(seven-string zither) tablatures tell us about his artistic career
and its historical significance?
Recently Yao Pinwen 姚品文, a leading Chinese scholar
of Zhu Quan studies, has suggested that the prince engaged
consciously in cultural construction and bequeathed a
princely, if not imperial, legacy for posterity, transcending
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the political one that he was not destined to build. Yao’s
suggestion is insightful and instructive, because it opens new
possibilities for interpreting Zhu Quan’s creativity and
significance in Ming cultural and musical history.
Elaborating on Yao’s suggestion, this chapter argues that
Zhu Quan strategically consumed and produced drama and
music, not only as a creative and talented artist but also as an
authoritarian and benevolent patron and disciplinarian. He
effectively disciplined the performing arts of his time and
shaped their subsequent developments.
To develop this interpretation of Zhu Quan’s role in
Chinese cultural and musical history, this chapter will
examine his preserved works in the media of drama and
music, identifying data on his consumption and production
of early Ming performing arts, and demonstrating how he
authentically continued with what his predecessors and
contemporaries had established, and creatively transformed
what he had appropriated into his personal statements. This
is why and how he managed to bequeath to posterity a
legacy that is artistically, biographically, culturally and
historically representative and significant.

A precocious and productive prince
Born in 1378 as the 17th son of the Ming founder Zhu
Yuanzhang 朱元璋 (1328–98), and dying in 1448, Zhu
Quan lived a long and productive life. Allegedly, he wrote,
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compiled or published more than a hundred works
addressing a variety of topics in astronomy, Confucianism,
Daoist liturgy, medicine, military crafts and the
performing arts of literature, music and theatre. The
majority of the prince’s writings are now lost; much was
allegedly destroyed during the imperial court’s suppression
of the 1519 rebellion that Zhu Chenhao 朱宸濠 (1479–1521),

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