Interaction between Elegance and Popularity via Exiting Poems from Strange Dreams

As an important part of the chuanqi drama in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties, exiting poems summarize the plots, depict the characters and convey the characters’ emotion. There are three types of the poems: the popular, the elegant and popular, and the elegant, and the three types coexisted for a long time in the chuanqi drama. The poem in WANG Yuanshou’s (birth or death year unknown) Strange Dreams (yi meng ji) consists of two lines from a poem of Tang Dynasty (618-907) and two proverbs/sayings, which can both be elegant and popular. The exiting poems are mainly composed of Tang poems, which are closely related to the literary aura of the Ming Dynasty, the flourishing of the literary ci school and the development of the printing technology. The use of poems of Tang Dynasty in exiting poems presents more literariness in the opera texts, while the use of proverbs/sayings demonstrates the popularity of the opera. As a result, the interaction between elegance and popularity is realized.