ABSTRACT
The plays of the ching hsi are arbitrarily divided into wen hsi and wu hsi, as we have already seen, the former being concerned with domestic and social affairs and the latter with military events, the exploits of brigands and the like, both styles being intermingled if necessary to suit the dramatic occasion. The plots of a great number of plays are drawn from two sources of paramount importance, the novels San Kuo Chih Yen /, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Shui Hu Chuan, The Water’s Edge. * Both these celebrated works have been the subject of a good deal of research, argument and speculation among Chinese scholars and literary historians and it is not intended here to record the various detailed theories which have been set out. The Yuan (1280-1568) and Ming (1568-1644) dynasties are attributed as the periods in which these works were created, and the names of several writers are associated with them by Chinese authorities. Whatever the real facts of authorship may be, it seems fairly obvious now that the writers were largely responsible for compiling in literary style tales and collections of tales, which already existed in oral and written form and had been handed down for generations long before certain individuals refined and perfected them as popular novels.
