A Prince, the Literati, and the Emperor: Two Faces of One Shuihu Play by Zhu Youdun.

Zhu Youdun, the prince of Zhou and the grandson of the Ming founding emperor, wrote and published thirty-one zaju plays. While Zhu Youdun's plays have been well-researched in drama scholarship, their publication, circulation, and textual variations emerging from transmission among different audiences are rarely studied. Situating Zhu Youdun's zaju writing and publishing activities as part of Ming princely publishing, this paper examines and compares two editions of Black Whirlwind Li Spurns Riches Out of Righteousness as a case study, one the printed edition circulating mainly among literati audience/readers and the other the heavily adapted manuscript edition based on inner palace performance for the imperial audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]