Tang's initial failure was mainly caused by his refusal to accompany the two sons of the chief grand secretariat ZHANG Juzheng 张居正 to their examinations, thereby offending the powerful man.

Without the support of influential figures like ZHANG Siwei 张四维 and SHEN Shixing 申时行, Tang was appointed Taischang scholar to oversee rites and sacrificial ceremonies in Nanjing, a position of little significance.

Nevertheless, Tang was deeply concerned about the state of affairs and actively involved himself by writing to the court, exposing corrupt practices within the system, such as funds intended for disaster-stricken civilians being misappropriated.

Despite this, disheartened by the constraints and his inability to effect change, Tang lost interest in politics and retired to his hometown, dedicating the remainder of his years to playwriting.

Daguan and LI Zhi were regarded as "the two cardinal figures" among late Ming thinkers, and their perspectives left a lasting impression on Tang Xianzu.

In addition to his spiritual pursuits, Tang nurtured the flame ignited by LI Zhi and passed on this torch through his masterpiece, The Peony Pavilion.

[4] The Four Dreams of Linchuan was a literary record of the ideological transition Tang went through concerning the meaning of life and one man's relationship to society.

The processional of the plays might be read as Tang's journey of disillusionment, paralleling the change from vehement advocacy of self-expression to doubts about the Tangibility of lived reality.

In summary, the greatest contribution of Tang was transforming theater from pleasure-seeking to philosophical preponderance, marking the maturation of Chinese drama as an art form.

In the chapter"Casual Notes" from Prosody of Qu, Wang Jide commented that Tang's language was "graceful yet seductive that the words drill to the bone".

[5] The first of Tang's attempts at writing Chuanqi plays yielded an unfinished script titled The Purple Flute, in the first year under the reign of Emperor Wanli (1573).

Record of Handan was adapted from The Tale of the Pillow 《枕中记》, a short fiction composed by another Tang novelist Shen Jiji 沈既济.

Tang Xianzu used to be keen on the governing class of the Ming and actively engaged in the discussion about the grand secretaries that took office in the second half of the dynasty.

Scholar Lu who served as the prime minister for years and swam in the center of power was built based on the shared traits of these high officials.

The journey of Scholar Lu also let out about the fatuity of the ruler, fawning officials stepping down one another to climb the ladder, and the ludicrousness of the day-to-day acts that each was carrying on.

At the same time, Chunyu was appointed the prefect of the Southern Bough and made advances in his career, living a fulfilling and prestigious life.

Though in the end, the play made a bow to Buddhist teaching and had the Zen master Qixuan break the tie between the lovers, affection was still regarded as the mightiest and most enduring of all Chunyu deemed of value.

Tang Xianzu theorized that aesthetic and metaphysical engagements such as poetry, music, and dance were all the outcome of human beings' search for spiritual fulfillment, in other words, the product of love.

Through the limited space of the stage and a small group of performers role-playing, " figures of the past thousands of years are brought back to life, dreams come true, curving our lips and drawing tears from our eyes without contriving an explanation", "enabling the proud and the prestige to be humble, calling the poor and the miserly to share, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to sigh, the lame to bounce."

"Dispersing hunger from the empty stomach, awakening the inebriated from drunkenness, keeping the sojourner from wandering, restoring the bedridden to be on their feet; allowing the snobbish to praise and the stubborn to embrace new ideas."

Tang Xianzu concluded that the unfathomable potential of drama and the magic of the stage was due the operation of theater and how it "turned on the button of humane feelings" within the deliverers and the receivers, allowing all to freely live and own the delight, the rage, the sorrow, and the joy.

Furthermore, Tang found that feudal ethics and purposed indoctrination was the greatest transgression to the instinctive attachment between man and his compatriots and human and nature.

The "reasoning" and "logic mind" were the process of justification for the rules and conventions designed to maintain the running of the cultural-political-economic units known as a society.

Liberation from the constraint of the prescriptions, and welcoming the call of human desire was what Tang Xianzu and the humanist philosophers stood for, and the motivation for their academic and creative endeavors.

From Tang's plays, it was obvious to see he was against crooked sensual desires, excessive indulgence in delicacy and sex, as well as the accumulation of wealth, power, and status through devious means that extended far beyond the basic needs.

The "strangeness" of Tang Xianzu's plays was presented through his authentic and innovative characterization and the romantic ambiance that invited the audience to contribute through their imagination.

In "A Prologue to The Manuscript of Qiu Maobo", Tang observed that "…the compelling writings were all full of life, and this liveliness was sponsored by the ingenuity of the playwright.

With the freedom to be as he would, the writer developed the wings to fly—to dive below the waves and to rise above the sky; to step back to the past and to leap into the future; to stretch, to bend, to broaden, to shrink, to emerge, to vanish at their will.

Tang Xianzu felt that every master writer was a unique being with a perceptive heart empowered by imagination and creativity, enabling them to breathe life into their compositions.

When The Peony Pavilion was circulating widely, dissatisfied with the rhyming and arrangement of melodies, the leader of the Wujiang School SHEN Jing 沈璟 and his followers appropriated the play and made changes to suit their taste.