從明清縮編版到現代演出版《牡丹亭》──談崑劇重構的幾個關鍵

From the Abridgments of the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties to the Modern Revivals of Mu-tan-t'ing: Some Issues Regarding the Reconstruction of Kunqu

戲劇為搬演而設。格高調雅的文士劇本，宜於案頭清玩，卻未必適合場上表演。玉茗四夢，曲壇向有趙璧隋珠之譽，《牡丹亭》尤為湯顯祖一生得意之作，然當其脫稿時，即因聲律、排場備受訾議而出現諸多改本。明清之際，眾多文士、藝人根據各自的審美需要、藝術品味乃至觀眾意識，從案頭到場上，先後對《牡丹亭》進行縮編與淬煉，從而加速《牡丹亭》的傳播，迨至近現代，中西表演文化交互激盪，《牡丹亭》更蔚為世界性的研究與搬演熱潮，現代諸版《牡丹亭》競相奏技，其中文化差異、行當錯位、舞美駁雜等問題一一浮現，究竟傳統崑劇在時空移易而不得不重新建構時，何者該「遵古以正今之訛」？何者不妨「從俗以就今之便」？均有討論之必要。本文先就明清縮編版（臧懋循、馮夢龍與徐碩園諸改本）探討《牡丹亭》全本戲之重整歷程，再就戲曲選本釐析折子戲之磨琢雕飾功夫，總結前賢將劇本文學演繹成舞台藝術之場上化經驗，對照現代諸版《牡丹亭》之搬演得失，冀能尋繹出今日崑劇重構的成功關鍵。

A play is written for performance. An elegant closet play by a man of letters is fitting for reading, yet it might not be equally fitting for performance on stage. Ever since its completion, Hsien-tzu T'ang's masterpiece Mu-tan-t'ing, or The Peony Pavilion, had been heatedly disputed because of its metrics; as a result, many adaptations and abridged versions were created. Scholars also debated over the tunes of the play. In the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, a lot of scholars and performers, based on their own aesthetic demands, the artistic taste and the audience awareness to downsize and refine the play so that it could be suitably presented on stage and meanwhile broadcasted rapidly. Up to the present day, The Peony Pavilion has been a huge hit with the worldwide research and performance owing to the interaction between the Chinese and the Western cultures. However, there are some problems emerged heterogeneously among the various editions of the performances, such as cultural differences, wrong casting of role categories, the discrepancies of the stage aesthetics, and so on. With the different time and space, what should be the priority for reconstructing the play? Shall we follow the traditional model or taken into account the context of the contemporary performance? The author will discuss these issues in this paper. The abridged editions in Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties will be explored first to find out the process of the play-reconstruction, and then the characteristics of ＂zhezixi＂ (折子戲) will be clarified and analyzed. Finally, the author will conclude the experiences which preceding people interpreted the literary script into the art of the stage and compare them with various modern stage revivals to assess the gains and losses, aiming to determine the most promising keys for present-day reconstruction of Kunqu.