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of state sacrifices and state banquets held inside court and performance practices, and dramatic forms and styles to
ritual sites, nor to the theatrical shows presented inside produce credible and meaningful shows that are, by
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private mansions or wine parlors (jiulou 酒樓) and other 21st-century criteria, more ideological than entertaining.
public entertainment institutions of the capital. Zhu Quan is not a celebrated popular dramatist in the
As reported by official Ming documents such as the Ming history of Chinese drama and theatre. As the script of Zhuo
shi 明史 (History of the Ming) and the Da Ming huidian 大明會典 Wenjun siben Xiangru 卓文君私奔相如 (Zhuo Wenjun Elopes with
(Collected Statutes of the Great Ming), the imperial Ming court Sima Xiangru) shows, Zhu creatively twisted a popular and
enjoyed many musical performances by trained court subversive story about romantic elopement into a morality
musicians. Zhu Yuanzhang promoted drama and music as play on gendered ideals and virtues. It lectures on
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a tool of governance and self-cultivation. He instituted masculine ambition and feminine submission at the expense
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three court offices to handle ritual and entertainment of the dramatic and romantic excitement that eloping
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music: the Shenyueguan 神樂觀 (Imperial Music Office), characters might be expected to evoke.
the Jiaofangsi 教坊司 (Office of Entertainment Music) and Zhu Quan portrayed Sima Xiangru (c. 179–117 bce), the
the Zhonggusi 鐘鼓司 (Music Office of the Inner Court). Zhu male protagonist in the play, as an ambitious and proud young
Yuanzhang promoted not only Confucian yayue 雅樂 man travelling with books and a sword to pursue riches and
(‘civilised music’) but also current and vernacular operas, the fame. Aside from his erudition and ambition, he has little that
exhortative functions of which he fully grasped and actively would physically or socially attract women. He pales against
manipulated. Thus he had the Pipaji 琵琶記 (The Lute) handsome, smart and passionate characters, such as Scholar
regularly performed, promoting this drama about filial piety Zhang Junrui 張君瑞 in the drama Xixiangji 西廂記 (Romance
and other social virtues as a luxury necessary for elite and of the Western Chamber). Similarly, Zhu Quan’s characterisation
moral living. To ensure his princes enjoyed and learned of Zhuo Wenjun, the female protagonist of his play, shows her
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from performances of moral theatre, he dispatched them to as more wifely than charming. As scripted, she is desirable
their princedoms with copies of some 1,700 dramatic and virtuous principally because she will not forget her duty to
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scripts. To provide for official music performances within serve her man – like a dutiful wife, she drives the carriage in
princedoms, he had them institute music offices with fixed which she and Sima Xiangru elope. This dutiful Zhuo
numbers of performers: 36 musicians would perform at Wenjun hardly flirts like Chen Miaochang 陳妙常, the
sacrificial rituals and 27 at formal banquets and other accidental nun in Yuzanji 玉簪記 (Jade Hairpin) who seduces
secular functions. In addition, each princedom would have her man by playing qin music with him. The contrast between
two eunuch music officers whose job was to oversee musical Zhu Quan’s play and other earlier or later Ming dramas
entertainments inside princely palaces. Early Ming attests to the prince’s prioritising of moralistic concerns over
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regulations on music at the princedoms were official but dramatic entertainment. For Zhu Quan, theatre was less an
idealistic. Entertainment and the musical needs of a princely entertainment than a means of personal and communal
household obviously demanded much more activity than cultivation and expression, an ideal and function that
that which two eunuch music officers could provide or orthodox Ming China appeared to have some success in
oversee. Throughout the Ming dynasty, princely palaces implementing throughout the second century of the empire. 22
self-indulgently, and even forcefully, recruited more local
musicians than were officially allowed. In other words, the Systematising theatre and arias
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dramatic-musical world of Ming China that Zhu Quan or To make theatre an expressive and social tool, Zhu Quan
any other Ming prince experienced was much more complex gave it discipline by regulating the composition and
and expansive than the selective picture painted by his performance of its dramatic arias. Around 1407, Zhu Quan
palace poetry. 19 compiled his Taihe zhengyinpu as an ideological account of
contemporary theatre and as a pioneering and practical
Moral plays and accurate lyrics formulary on linguistic and structural attributes of 353 fixed
This princely musical experience nurtured Zhu Quan’s tunes for northern arias (beiqu qupai 北曲曲牌). With a
personal creativity and strategic use of musical theatre to mixture of materials taken from earlier writers and insights
assert his artistic, Daoist and moralist self. He is known to derived from his own experiences and theories, the
have produced at least 14 dramas; two have been preserved, document shows how the prince continued and developed
demonstrating how he continued the creative practices of early Ming theatre and aria composition.
Chinese theatre and implemented his father’s teaching on As it is now preserved and known, Taihe zhengyinpu
using the medium as an artistic and didactic tool of includes a preface and a miscellany of seven lists or reports.
governance. Like other traditional Chinese dramatists, Zhu The preface is a concise exposition of the prince’s didactic
Quan scripted new dramas based on culturally familiar promotion of drama as a means of governance and cultural
stories and popular characters. He wrote new aria lyrics cultivation, an aesthetic learned from his father. The
according to pre-existing tunes (qupai 曲牌), aligning remaining texts present a mixture of pre-existing materials
musical and textual structures such as melodic and linguistic and original arguments. They include a list of 15 styles of
tones, number of phrases, phrase lengths, and rhyme and dramas and arias (yuefuti 樂府體); a list of nine literary
cadence schemes. His new lyrics were sung with known, if structures (duishi 對式); a list of names for 187 Yuan and 17
not old, melodies. Ming dramatists and criticisms on their works; a
Zhu Quan was a conservative and didactic dramatist. He classification of drama into 12 types; a register of 535 titles of
employed standard theatrical vocabulary, stage and northern drama (zaju 雜劇), 471 of which were authored by

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