[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.

Juliet: My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite. (Act Two, Scene II)

She loved Romeo and devoted all her heart into love.

Juliet: go ask his name. —If he be married,

My grave is like to be my wedding bed. (Act One, Scene V)[10][P30]

In her secret rendezvous with Romeo, in dealing with her parents’ forcing of her marriage to Paris, she showed extraordinary intelligence. She put forward every plea she could think of to stop or delay the projected marriage. She pleaded that she knew too little of the proposed husband, that she was too young for marriage, that it was still too soon after the death of Tybalt. When she failed to persuade her parents to delay the wedding, she took Priest Laurence’s advice and drank the phial bravely[11][P100]. Here Juliet’s brave character was shown through what she said and did.

She was a complete rebel of the feudalism society. She was bold enough to seek love in defiance of the enmity of the two families. After the first sight of Romeo, she knew he was the only son of her father’s great enemy. But she was still determined to love him and made appointment for their tryst. Then she decided to arrange for marriage and lay all her fortunes at Romeo’s foot and follow her husband throughout the world. When she found that her lover had died, she killed herself to show her loyalty to Romeo and the tenacity to pursue happy life. She would rather die than marry Paris, whom she did not love at all. The enthusiastic love encouraged her to throw away all the shyness and said directly to her lover: “Please tell me where you go, I will dedicate myself to you, and go with you to any place.”[12][P42] Both Romeo and Juliet went ahead without any hesitation. They just followed their natural instinct, never accommodated themselves to the feudal ethics. They vividly displayed the humanist spirit of the English Renaissance.

3.2 The characterization in The Butterfly Lover

Compared with Romeo and Juliet, Zhu and Liang were not complete rebels of feudalism[13][P39]. They were only the typical examples of literary figures against the feudalism. Liang was so gentle and weak that he did not take any positive actions to protect their love. When he knew that Zhu would get marry with Ma Wencai, he accepted the fact, instead of taking some measures. He was not so brave to resist or elope with Zhu. He just showed his love sickness lonely, and died for his love in the end[14][P42].

By contrast, Zhu was more positive, in spite of the fact that she did not defeat the feudalism. But she tried and did make some decisions by herself. Her disguising up as a man was actually a revolt against the social bias. Later her determination to die for love with Liang deserved greater honor. She pretended to agree to the arranged marriage but on condition that the wedding procession must bypass her lover‘s graveyard. They were coming along when she all of a sudden jumped out of the bridal sedan and rushed to Liang‘s tomb, where she bitterly condemned the feudal ideology that had thwarted their love.

She was driven to despair completely and had to keep hope in the following life, by dreaming to become a butterfly and be together with Liang life after life.

The heavens took pity, and the tomb opened up itself as if to receive her. She threw herself in to join her loved one in death[6][P5].

What people saw next was a pair of beautiful butterflies flying out of the opening, dancing happily here and there in the free air signifying the happy reunion of the troubled two, but only in death.

3.3 The differences of the characters between these two pairs

As we know, a person’s behavior, thinking, and even the moral quality, are all formed by the influence of culture[15][P35]. The cultural discrepancy between western countries and China brought about different characterizations. The author of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, was the most outstanding writer in the period of the English Renaissance. And the feature of the English Renaissance was humanity, which encouraged human being to enjoy the happiness in this life[16][P31]. But in China, the feudalism suppressed humanity completely. Therefore, if we compare Liang and Zhu with Romeo and Juliet, we shall find the Chinese lovers were more reticent and the western pair more outspoken. Both the western and the Chinese heroines love the heroes, but Juliet was straightforward while Zhu was reserved. Zhu fell in love with Liang at first sight, and in the following three years, they both studied together, lived together, but Zhu was still chaste. Educated by the traditional ethics, she could not bravely express her love to Liang like Juliet. On the other hand, Liang complied with the ancestors’ instruction, and paid all his attention to study. He did not fight for his love and pursue his own and Zhu’s happiness like Romeo at all[17][P131]. However, Liang gave his life for missing and love finally.

4. Play construction

Finally, the study of the play organization or construction also opens a window for a better understanding of these two love tragedies. We will look into how each story developed, and how the pace of development conformed to their individual theme presentation.

4.1 The development of the conflict in Romeo and Juliet

After the dance party finished, Romeo sneaked into Juliet’s garden and expressed his love to her without reservation, even did not care that the members of Juliet’s family would kill him. Fortunately, his love gained Juliet’s reply. She also accepted his love without giving any thought to restraint. They made a solemn pledge of love to each other. Until now, their love had not been infringed and obstructed. But they not only pursue a temporary happiness, what they want was to love each other forever. Therefore, they decided to get married secretly and waited for a chance to leave their hometown. And with the help of Priest Laurence, they had their dream come true and held a simple wedding. If there were not any misfortune, everything would become quiet and go well. But something happened.

Two hours later, Romeo killed Juliet’s cousin without any choices, because he had to safeguard his family honor and protect his friend. This was the first sudden change, which formed a huge twister, involving all the roles into the conflict. Because of this, Romeo was exiled and had to leave Juliet. All of these made Juliet sorrowful. Her parents made a misunderstanding and thought that she was sad of his cousin’s death. Therefore, they ordered Juliet to get married with Paris. That was the second sudden change.

It was in vain for Juliet to stand against her parents. So Juliet had to turn to Priest Laurence for help. And Priest Laurence gave her a liquid medicine, which would make her sleep deeply, and look like dead. So long as Romeo came back and took her away, their love and lives would be saved. But unfortunately, the priest did not send the letter to Romeo in time because of the pestilence. That was the third sudden change.

After Romeo came to the Cemetery, he misunderstood that Juliet had died. As a result, he drank the poison. After several minutes, Juliet woke up but she also killed herself for love. These three sudden changes took place closely, nearly without any intermission.

Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt was so arbitrary that Romeo had reached the end of his forbearance and killed him without choices, which seemed to happen by chance. In fact, it was inevitable at the background of the family feud. This first sudden change made the story develop quickly. And the leading roles had to face the reality from then on. Therefore, every action, every sudden change would become the background of the next matter. They pushed the story ahead, made the conflict sharper and sharper. So facing every sudden change, Romeo and Juliet took corresponding measures until the play conflict burst out sharply, reaching its peak. This love story only lasted for four days. The first day, Romeo and Juliet met in a dance party and fell in love with each other at first sight. Then there were three sudden changes in the following three days. The plots of the story were quite well-knitted, and the quick pace of its development corresponds to the character features of Romeo and Juliet, energetic and fast-moving.

4.2 The development of conflict in The Butterfly Lover

The Chinese were an implicit people at that time. Most of the traditional Chinese would not express their feeling directly[8][P7]. And The Butterfly Lover was from the folk legends. Therefore, the development of the conflict went about at a snail’s pace, just like Zhu’s love to Liang. Distinguished with the sudden changes in Romeo and Juliet, there were not any sudden changes in The Butterfly Lover, from beginning to the end, which made the conflict of the play develop slowly.

Both the feelings and actions of the leading roles developed step by step. And there were some intermissions between their actions. The complete story lasted for more than three years, beginning from Zhu going to school and ending by their becoming butterflies. During the three years, so many things happened. Of course, the play plots were not as close as Romeo and Juliet’s. And the conflict was not so tense like Romeo and Juliet’s, either.

4.3 The different endings of the two plays

The endings of Romeo and Juliet and The Butterfly Lover seemed to be the same, but in fact, they were quite different. The Butterfly Lover was a love tragedy. It reflected the contradictions existing between the advanced youth and the backward social system. But it did not deject people after they enjoyed it. On the contrary, it stirred up people’s courage and confidence to pursue freedom and happiness, for it ended the love story with a romantic plot: Liang and Zhu became two butterflies upon death. They flied in the blue and bright sky together, a beautiful rainbow hanging in the sky, thousands of kinds of flowers sending out wafts of delicate fragrance. What a beautiful picture it was! How could a person feel sad at such pretty scenery? Of course not. On the other hand, people grieved at the end of Romeo and Juliet. Both lovers won their love, but with the sacrifice of their lives. At the same time, the two families turned toward each other and swore friendship and peace，and the lament entangled people for a long time. People cannot help feeling sad and tearful when the play finished. The end of The Butterfly Lover changed the basic atmosphere of the play. By contrast, the end of Romeo and Juliet added a sad atmosphere to the whole play[18][P490].

5. Conclusion

Love is an everlasting topic. Romeo and Juliet and The Butterfly Lover, these two pretty love stories, were both the odes to youth and love. They were just like two sisters, but lived in different countries. And because of the distinct cultures, there exist differences in theme presentation, characterization, and play construction. With this further investigation of these differences, we gain a more direct view of the conflict between love and feudalism. Meanwhile, it will surely help strengthen us in our pursuit of love[19][P28].

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