Recent Color Reproductions of Qing Dynasty Palace Multi-Colored Play Scripts

RESEARCH NOTE: RECENT COLOR REPRODUCTIONS OF QING DYNASTY PALACE MULTI-COLORED PLAY SCRIPTS DAVID L. ROLSTON University of Michigan It is fairly well known that many of the Qing emperors (and one empress dowager, in particular) were dedicated consumers of a wide variety of theatrical performances in the various Qing palaces, and that the court insisted that several different kinds of written plays scripts would be prepared and archived for all drama performances. An increasing number of scholars have been making use in their research of play scripts that were prepared for these performances and were preserved in the imperial archives or were bought by collectors after they made their way onto the old book market and eventually ended up in library collections in China and abroad. 2012 saw the long-awaited appearance of the first book in English on Qing dynasty palace theater, Ascendant Peace in the Four Seas: Drama and the Qing Imperial Court (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2012), by Ye Xiaoqing (1952–2010). Her study is more concerned with documents about performance than performance itself and rarely mentions play scripts in any detail.1 While it is true that only a few of us will choose to do research on Qing palace stagecraft, I think those of us interested in traditional Chinese theater need to have some familiarity with the kinds of things that happened on the stage in the Qing palaces since the court was generally able and willing to commit resources, human and material, that commercial troupes could only dream about. Commercial troupes had to be able to carry what they needed for performances from venue to venue. What we tend to think about as essential to traditional Chinese theater such as the use of the bare stage, limited props, no or little scenery, etc., characterized the practice of commercial troupes but not that of the imperial court.2 Palace performances could get quite complicated in terms of the number of people and things whose movement had to be coordinated, and this seems to have stimulated the creation of different kinds of production scripts and written aids with far more stage directions than was typically the case. Luckily, reproductions of Qing dynasty palace play scripts and auxiliary documents have become more and more readily available. In 2010, in my first letter as 1 The major exception is the performances put on for Lord Macartney in 1793 with which she opens the book and which she described in an earlier article, ‘‘Ascendant Peace in the Four Seas: Tributary Drama and the Macartney Mission of 1793,’’ Late Imperial China 26.2 (December 2005): 89–113. However, neither work includes an image of the script involved. 2 It was not until fairly late in the nineteenth century, beginning in Shanghai, that you begin to get the phenomenon of theaters maintaining their own troupes. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34. 2 (December 2015): 188–193© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2015 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2015.1096570 editor in this journal, I mentioned the availability of photo-reproductions of Qing dynasty palace play scripts in volumes 660–696 of Gugong zhenben congkan 故 宮珍本叢刊 (Collection of precious holdings of the Forbidden Palace; Haikou: Hainan chuban she, 2000–2001).3 The following year saw the photo-reproduction of the holdings of the National Library in Beijing from the Qing dynasty palace theater bureau Shengping shu 昇平暑 (Bureau of ascending peace): Zhongguo guojia tushu guan cang Shengping shu dang’an jicheng 中國國家圖書館藏昇平暑 (Compendium of Shengping shu archives held in the National Library), 108 volumes (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011). Volumes 51–108 of this set contain play scripts and other texts used for performances.4 Previous to these two publications , the largest single set of photo-reprints of palace scripts was the ninth series of Guben xiqu congkan 古本戲曲叢刊 (Compendium of old texts of indigenous Chinese drama; Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), which included ten serial plays (the longest of which have 240 scenes). The trouble with these photo-reprints, however, is that they are not in color and some of the originals made rather spectacular use of color, as we will see. Although you can...