Wang Shifu (),

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theobald ...

of Wang Dexin (1250-1337?), was a successful

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

playwright of the

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...

. He is a representative of “Wencaipai” (Literal talent group) in Chinese opera literature. He was born in Dadu (present-day

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

), the capital of the Yuan dynasty. His ancestral home was in Hebei province, Baoding city. Wang was born into a noble family. His father was a general who worked for Genghis Khan. Under the impact of his elder generation, Wang started his officialdom career as a county official. He was then promoted to the investigating censor of Shanxi Province due to his brilliant talent and achievement. However, due to his characters and dispositions, he finally chose to escape from the officialdom and devoted himself to literature creation. There are 14 plays attributed to Wang and only three are extant. The extant three are

Romance of the Western Chamber ''Romance of the Western Chamber'' (), also translated as ''The Story of the Western Wing'', ''The West Chamber'', ''Romance of the Western Bower'' and similar titles, is one of the most famous Chinese dramatic works. It was written by the Yuan d ...

,Li Chun Hall, and Po Yao Ji. His ''

'' (''Xi Xiang Ji'') is one of the most famous Chinese plays and is still popular today. It is an amplified

zaju ''Zaju'' was a form of Chinese opera which provided entertainment through a synthesis of recitations of prose and poetry, dance, singing, and mime, with a certain emphasis on comedy (or, happy endings). Although with diverse and earlier roots, ''za ...

(杂剧), a then-popular theatrical form. Wang Shifu's writing features in depicting the emotional changes of characters euphemistically and delicately to shape the image of the characters. He also focused on the use of foreshadowing to make twists and turns in the plot in order to create unexpected dramatic effects and depict the complex reality in life. Wang shifu also developed a brand-new writing format compared with the orthodox Yuan Dynasty zaju repertoire, which was a cycle of five linked pieces. From dramatizing and recomposing a love story already popular in the twelfth century and sharing plots with other zaju, Wang invented his own writing style. This angle of view after popular success suggested that Wang may have been an experienced professional in the first age of Chinese theatre.

Notes

References

*Wang, Shifu, Edited and Translated with an Introduction by Stephen H. West and

Wilt L. Idema Wilt L. Idema (born 12 November 1944) is a Dutch scholar and Sinologist who taught at University of Leiden and Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 16 ...

; with a Study of Its Woodblock Illustrations by Yao Dajuin. ''The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. .

External links

* * Yuan dynasty dramatists and playwrights Yuan dynasty writers Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Writers from Beijing 1250 births 1337 deaths 14th-century Chinese dramatists and playwrights 13th-century Chinese dramatists and playwrights {{China-writer-stub