I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 28 Decision
"Teacher Six?!" Hou Sen was shocked by the name.

Could this Teacher Liu be referring to Yu Liu? Hou Sen wondered secretly in his heart.

Has Yu Liu become so important in the young prince's heart? Hou Sen suddenly felt a sense of crisis.

The next day, Zhu Houxuan kept his promise and asked the Zheng family troupe to perform a special show for the craftsmen, but not in the theater because the theater was in the inner court and belonged to the harem, so it was not convenient to let them in.

Finally, they found an open space in the outer court. Fortunately, the Zheng family troupe had enough equipment to build a stage, so they set up the stage in the open space.

When the craftsmen arrived in front of the stage, they suddenly became restrained. They were afraid to step forward and gathered at the side.

"What's going on? Why are they so far away?" Zhu Houxuan asked puzzledly.

In the end, no one answered him.

"Jin Tong, tell me what's going on?" Zhu Houxuan pointed at Jin Tong in the crowd and said.

"Your Highness, this is how we watch plays in our place. The troupe is invited by the masters, and the masters take up the best seats. This is how we watch plays."

Jin Tong's words made Zhu Houxuan both angry and amused.

Finally, under his continuous orders, the craftsmen finally gathered in the middle.

The opera began. This time Zhu Houxuan ordered a very lively one, "Eight Immortals Celebrating Birthday". Although he could not concentrate after watching it for a while, the craftsmen were fascinated by the performance on the stage and kept laughing happily as the performance progressed.

Zhu Houxuan observed this scene with great interest. He found that many palace maids and eunuchs were also watching the show quietly, but they did not dare to look too obviously and could only pretend to pass by. He even saw a young eunuch passing by several times.

Zhu Houxuan suddenly realized that no matter whether they were craftsmen or servants in the palace, perhaps they were illiterate, perhaps they did not know any great principles, perhaps they were of a low status, but as human beings, they were born with a yearning and pursuit for beautiful things.

However, this yearning and pursuit has been suppressed in this feudal society.

If this point is used well, it can play a very important role.

Ming Dynasty opera gradually prospered in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. From the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the prosperous commerce and handicrafts allowed the common people in the south of the Yangtze River to have extra money, and they began to pursue the enjoyment of spiritual life.

Many poor scholars with no hope of a career in officialdom also devoted themselves to drama creation, further promoting the prosperity of opera in the Ming Dynasty.

The most famous among them are Tang Xianzu and Feng Menglong, but they were not born at this time.

This scene became the talk of the craftsmen for several days. Zhu Houxuan clearly felt that the craftsmen worked harder and respected him more.

This made him even more determined to build his own propaganda force. To carry out the industrial revolution, technological progress alone was not enough, but also required ideological liberation.

Just like the West started the Industrial Revolution after the Renaissance. Without the Renaissance to liberate Europe ideologically and culturally, there would be no Industrial Revolution. Europe would have sunk into the Dark Ages, and any force for scientific progress would have been stifled by the Inquisition.

Therefore, it is very important to establish our own propaganda force to liberate the minds of the people of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houxuan planned to use drama as a starting point because he found that the royal palace had quite a lot of resources in this area.

He planned to bring the outstanding dramas of later generations to the Ming Dynasty and act as a plagiarist. But what kind of drama should he bring? Zhu Houxuan began to have a headache about this.

In his previous life, he was not very interested in the art form of opera, because there were so many entertainment options in later life and he had not seen many plays.

"White-Haired Girl"?
This is a powerful weapon in this era. If he dares to take it out now, he will be strangled by feudal forces the next day.

He is still in the stage of accumulating strength, so at this stage he should focus on training the team instead of taking the initiative to commit suicide.

He suddenly remembered that Yu Chunlai suggested to him yesterday to choreograph "Journey to the West: The Women Kingdom". So why not choreograph "Journey to the West: The Women Kingdom"?

If you are not familiar with opera, you can just make a play based on the episode about the Kingdom of Women in the 86 version of Journey to the West. There is no need for any opera singing, and just focus on daily conversations like a TV series. This kind of play should be called a spoken drama in later generations.

The more Zhu Houxuan thought about it, the more he felt that there was something to it. This version of the plot was an extremely classic.

In addition, various soundtracks from Journey to the West could also be added. There were many musicians in the palace's music office anyway. The most important thing was that Zhu Houxuan felt that several lyrics from the soundtracks of Journey to the West in later generations could express his determination very well. Concubine Liu still did not fully support him, and many things were difficult to say directly, so he wanted to let Concubine Liu know what he was thinking in this way.

This seems to be turning into a musical, Zhu Houxuan thought uncertainly.

But never mind all that, let’s first find a copy of “Journey to the West” and read the plot, and then carefully study how to adapt it.

After he found a copy of "Journey to the West", he discovered that the author was not Wu Cheng'en, but "Master of Huayang Dongtian".

In fact, later research has shown that the author of "Journey to the West" is most likely not Wu Cheng'en.

The story of the original Journey to the West had already taken shape in the Yuan Dynasty, but it was certainly significantly added to and deleted from afterwards. The version that was finally passed down to later generations contained a large amount of Quanzhen Sect thought. There were even more than a dozen poems in the book that were directly copied from Quanzhen Taoist scriptures.

Therefore, some scholars have inferred that the story of Journey to the West took two hundred years from its finalization to its final draft. During this period, many authors added and deleted parts, and the final drafter was most likely Yan Xiyan, the founder of the Yanzu School of Quanzhen Sect, and Huayang Dongtian was the Maoshan where Yan Xiyan established his Taoism.

Therefore, the copy of "Journey to the West" in Zhu Houxuan's hand was signed as "Master of Huayang Dongtian", and Wu Chengen was only five years old at that time.

The reason why later generations believed that the author of Journey to the West was Wu Cheng'en is because in modern times, Lu Xun, Dong Zuobin and others finally concluded that it was "the original work of Wu Cheng'en" based on the record of "Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West" in "Huai'an Prefecture Chronicles".

Given Mr. Lu Xun's influence, it would be impossible to overturn this conclusion without sufficient evidence.

However, Zhu Houxuan did not care about this, but started reading "Journey to the West". He had never read the original work of Journey to the West in his previous life, and when he read it, he suddenly discovered something embarrassing.

Yesterday he angrily accused Mr. Zheng of making up stories, but after reading the original novel, he found that the plot he watched yesterday was completely faithful to the original novel.

The image of the Queen of the Kingdom of Women is stereotyped as a female goblin.

In the original novel, Tang Seng is a person who cries all the time. To sum it up: in the drama, he is like a saint, but he has mortal heart; in the book, he is like a mortal, but he has a saintly heart.

After a moment of embarrassment, Zhu Houxuan threw this matter and the original work aside. What do you mean by faithful to the original work? Teacher Liu has already certified that the 86 version is not a fabrication!

Recently, the plot and the protagonist's stalls in various aspects have indeed been spread out a bit, and the span is quite large. That's because the effects of each choice made by the protagonist are not so quickly visible, and technological development is not achieved overnight. However, in the next chapters, various lines have begun to be recovered, and all the foreshadowing done before will also play a role.


(End of this chapter)