《罗密欧与朱丽叶》和《梁祝》的对比研究(1)

[Abstract] Romeo and Juliet and The Butterfly Lover are two well—known literary creations in the western and Chinese histories. Both are classified as great love tragedies in that their heroes and heroines all first struggled desperately in the conflict between love and feudalism, and at last coincidentally gave up their youthful lives for love. However, owing to cultural discrepancy between western countries and China, a comparative study of these two works deserves even greater appreciation. This paper dwells on their dissimilarities from three aspects: theme presentation, characterization and play construction. It is cherished that such a comparative research will further enhance readers’ appreciation as well as the literary status of these two treasures in the world of literature.
[Key words] Theme Presentation; Characterization; Play Construction; Romeo and Juliet; The Butterfly Lover

【摘 要】 《罗密欧与朱丽叶》和《梁祝》是中西文学史上的两大文学巨著，都是感人至深的爱情悲剧，剧中的主人公为了真爱同样挣扎在封建势力与理想爱情的矛盾冲突中，最后又不约而同地为了爱情而舍弃年轻的生命。然而，由于中西方文化的差异，从而使得人们对于这两部作品的对比研究产生了更为浓厚的兴趣。本文将从主题展现，人物刻画以及戏剧结构这三个方面来讨论它们之间的不同之处，也希望能通过该对比研究，使得读者对于这文学宝库中的两大财富有进一步的了解。
【关键词】主题呈现；人物刻画；戏剧结构；《罗密欧与朱丽叶》；《梁祝》

1.Introduction
Romeo and Juliet and The Butterfly Lover are both important and famous love stories in the history of literature. Both of the stories took place in the background of feudalism, which served as the immediate reason of the tragedies. Their leading roles all first struggled desperately in the conflict between love and feudalism, and coincidentally died for love at last. But because of the cultural discrepancy between western countries and China, the same love tragedies found distinct presentations in these two works. It is the purpose of this paper to make a comparative research of them, emphasizing their dissimilarities from three aspects: theme presentation, characterization, and play construction. Only through detailed analysis of both sameness and differences can readers obtain further appreciation of these two treasures.

2. Theme Presentation
Romeo and Juliet was a product of the English Renaissance while The Butterfly Lover embodied the life in the feudal China. However, these two works shared the same theme, that is, the conflict between love and feudalism. Although the main characters were faithful to love, there existed simply too many obstacles on their ways to true love and marriage .In order to protect their love, they stood against their respective feudal families[1][P4]. They failed and died for love in the end. They were like two sister plays. But upon further investigation, the same theme was given characteristic presentations in each work.

2.1 The conflict in Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet’s families were deadly enemies. But they fell in deep love with each other at their first sight at the ball. And passion lent them power. They exchanged their faithful vow of love under the moonlight. Such love affairs between the families in feud certainly led to great conflict. In order to protect their love, Romeo and Juliet took all kinds of actions to revolt against the feudalism.
With the help of Priest Laurence, they got married very quickly without telling their parents. At the same time, the old Lord Capulet had been planning for his daughter Juliet’s future. He had chosen a nobleman named Paris to be her husband. He supposed that Juliet would feel honored and glad to accept him as a husband. But instead of cheering Juliet, this news served but to increase her misery. She perplexed her mother by her plain distress. She refused to marry Paris. And her excuses made her parents exasperated. It seemed to her father that she was putting obstacles in the way of her own good fortune. So he sternly ordered her to be ready by Thursday. In her extremity, Juliet decided to seek help of the kind priest. She said there was nothing she would not face, even the death by her own hands, rather than give up Romeo and marry Paris.
In order to be together with Romeo, Juliet took the medicine bravely on the eve of the wedding day and lost consciousness. Romeo got the news of her “death” and felt an extremity of despair. He thought he would have no joy when Juliet was dead. So he kissed her and then drank the poison. When Juliet came to herself, she found her Romeo was dead, so she killed herself with a dagger. This climax of the conflict resulted in this pair winning their love, but with the sacrifice of their lives.

2.2 The conflict in The Butterfly Lover
As to The Butterfly Lover, ideal love was also impossible. For in traditional China, the young people should obey their parents as to the marriage, especially for a young lady in a respectable feudal family.
Although Zhu was an outstanding woman in the feudal China, with her courage to pursue free life and ideal love, she faced an environment armed with a deeply-rooted ideology of male-chauvinism, which barred her from realizing her dreams[1][P101].
Therefore, going to school for learning, which is a simple thing today, was quite difficult even prohibitive for a woman at that time. She could only succeed in her wish by disguising herself as a young man. When Zhu asked for studying in school like other boys, her sister-in-law created difficulties for her even ridiculed her, saying Zhu would lose her chastity during the period. Then Zhu had to put a flower into a flower vase and swear that if she behaved improperly, the flower would die, and if not, it would keep alive until she came back. Later on, she went to school. But her sister –in-law did not give up, she put some boiled water into the vase in the hope that the flower would die at once. Fortunately, her plot failed, the flower grew more and more beautiful. This episode before the later love tragedy signified in advance the huge feudal pressure on Zhu[2][P34]. In such an environment, Zhu’s pursuit of love was not like Romeo and Juliet’s. Zhu fell in love with Liang, but because of the feudalism as well as her family status, Zhu could not show her love openly. Compared with Romeo and Juliet, she was brought up to be reserved. Therefore, her love to Liang could only be developed little by little, slowly and subconsciously.
Zhu fell in love with Liang, without revealing her true identity. She invited him to visit his home and meet his younger sister (Zhu herself). Throughout all this time, Liang was completely oblivious to the fact that Zhu was in fact a young woman who fell hopelessly in love with him. When the time came for them to return to their respective villages, Zhu tried in vain, to let Liang know the truth. Liang fell in love with his classmate's female form; and promised to return to marry her. When Zhu returned home, her father had already arranged a different suitor for her and prepared to marry her off to a powerful noble's son. By the time Liang rushed to her home to seek her hand in marriage, it was too late. Her father's will had prevailed and she was betrothed.

It was not long before Liang succumbed and died of a broken heart. The conflict between ideal love and feudalism deprived them of their love and even lives.

2.3 The differences between these two conflicts
In these two plays, the leading roles’ pursuits of ideal love and marriage expressed the characters’ natural instincts[3][P6]. In Romeo and Juliet, the leading roles’ families were the representatives of the feudal power. They would fight on the street even when they just happened to meet each other, let alone permitting their posterity to love each other. Here are the sentences by Juliet’s father:
To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither,
Out, you greensickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
You tallow-face![3][P30]
We can find that when Juliet refused to marry the man she did not love, her parents scolded her severely and threatened her to leave the family. Therefore, Juliet could resist her father with much less compunction than Zhu. This was why she was luckier than Zhu. For her family and Romeo’s were deadly enemies, but in their hearts they still had a dream, which was to escape with the help of the Catholic father, leaving their families, giving up their family names and living happily together with each other in another place forever[4][P49]. In order to realize this dream, they could do anything. And the conflict would be cleared away if they succeed.
In The Butterfly Lover, the environment they lived in was similar to Romeo and Juliet’s. What they faced was also a heavy feudal society. The difference was that Zhu could not resist her family strongly and completely like Juliet. Although her family forced her to marry the other young man Ma Wencai, that’s because they love Zhu. For in traditional feudal China, in people’s mind, including Zhu’s parents, marrying a rich family was good to Zhu, so they just persuaded Zhu time and time again with good intentions. Maybe this kind of love was not suitable for Zhu, but she could not refuse. Therefore, Zhu could not resist them like Romeo and Juliet. And this was why Zhu was more unfortunate than Romeo and Juliet.

3. Characterization
People are not isolated, especially for the leading roles in a play; living in specific environments, people tend to inherit part of their character traits from their surroundings[5][P49]. And their characters decide their will. Then they will take all kinds of actions under the control of their wills. This part will examine how the characterizations in each work contribute to the differences in theme presentation discussed above.

3.1 The characterization in Romeo and Juliet
Characterization in Romeo and Juliet was direct and concrete: we know the inner world of the persona by what they said and what they did.
Because of the different culture backgrounds and their influences, people in the west are usually more outspoken than their Chinese counterparts. Romeo and Juliet saw each other at a banquet, they fell in love and Romeo kissed Juliet. She accepted and asked him to do that again.

Romeo: Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purged.(kisses her)
Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Romeo: Sin from my lips, O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again. (Kissed her)
Juliet: You kiss by the book. (Act one, Scene V)[6][P32]
Romeo and Juliet were full of youthful spirit and bravery, and they were so naive and unaffected that people can feel romance from them. Romeo was an enthusiastic young man, both peaceloving and courageous[7][P44]. When he saw a fight was happening between Tybalt and his friends, he did his best to intervene, beating down the swords of their opponents. When he saw Tybalt mortally wounded his friend on his account, he provoked Tybalt to a fight and instantly killed him. In order to show his faithful love to Juliet, he risked his life to climb over the walls of the orchard to meet her and exchange their love’s faithful vows.
Romeo: With love’s light wings did I o’er perch these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love attempt.
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
Juliet: If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

Romeo: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Then twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity. (Act Two, Scene II)[8][P36]

From Romeo’s own speech, we recognize his courage to go see his Juliet, his cleverness to escape from the Capulet’s men and eagerness to have Juliet as his wife.
And then he was willing to throw away his family name. He could even give up his precious life for loving Juliet and staying together forever.
Juliet was a naive and lively girl. She was brave and decisive, clever and resourceful[9][P28]. Being a strong character, she represented the power of hope. In the love affair with Romeo, she was the dominant part. It seems that power of her love would never dry up.