This paper responds to the widely accepted yet overly simplistic assumption in Song drama studies that the drama players were ordinary people, who were liberated from agricultural activities because of the economic and commercial boom from the ninth century onward, and acted of their own will    to choose drama performance as their means of making profit. Based 
on an indepth investigation of the long history of the musician household registration system from the early medieval to late imperial periods, this paper proves that the majority of the goulan drama players belonged to the musician households, were trained by and for the government, and had little freedom to change their identity. It also further reveals how the Song court and its civil and military bureaus controlled and used the entertainers in the pleasure precincts, deliberately established in the capital and other cities, to facilitate wine selling and other government-owned profitable enterprises.