Dying for Love in The Peony Pavilion and Romeo and Juliet 英语专业毕业论文.doc

dying for love in the peony pavilion and romeo and juliet introductionthe peony pavilion and romeo and juliet are two extraordinary canonical works about feverish love on the international stage of drama. the peony pavilion was written in 1598 by the famous chinese dramatist tang xianzu of the ming dynasty. it has been referred to by some critics as the chinese version of william shakespeares romeo and juliet, which was written just two years earlier in 1596. tang xianzu (1550-1617) and william shakespeare (1564-1616), were contemporaries living in vastly different cultures. in the two works under study in this paper, the shared theme of the hero and the heroine pursuing genuine love relentlessly, even to the sacrifice of death, forms a very interesting perspective from which we can consider the way in which dying for love is presented in two significant works of western and eastern drama.notes i would like to express my appreciation to marcia mcdonald and james wells, both shakespearean scholars at belmont university, to david jones of the southeast regional conference of asian studies, to daoist specialist ronnie littlejohn of belmont university, and to farley richmond of the university of georgia for their many suggestions and improvements in this paper. the two texts both illustrate the universal subject of love. both dramas depict the fervent love and burning passion of a young couple. both texts explore the relationship between love and death and the valuable meaning created by lovers dying for love. in these two works death turns out to be the sacrifice required as the remedy for lovers who cannot have their beloved. in this comparison of these two works i will first provide an overview of each text. since this paper was first delivered on january 13, 2005 at the hawaii international conference on arts and humanities, co-sponsored by the east west council for education and the asia-pacific institute of peking university, i felt that i should offer an overview of both texts. it seemed to me that perhaps some western readers might not be familiar with the peony pavilion and some chinese readers might require a reminder about the basics of romeo and juliet. then, i will reconstruct how each play utilizes the idea of dying for love, giving more extended discussion of the peony pavilion. after laying this groundwork, i will pursue my principal objective which is to make some comparisons about how “dying for love” is presented in the two texts. this final stage of the paper will give me an opportunity to make some concluding observations about what both authors say concerning the life-threatening and life-givingnature of love, and how this is a reflection of their different cultural and literary world views.overview of the textsthe peony pavilion, also translated as the return of the soul, is called mudan ting 牡丹亭 in chinese. written in a beautifully poetic style, the drama revolves around the love story of liu mengmei 柳瞢梅 (willow dreaming plum), a young scholar, and du liniang杜麗娘, the daughter of a high official in nanan in southern china. in a visit to the family garden at the back of the official residence, liniang falls asleep and is approached in a dream by mengmei, with whom she then has a romantic affair in the peony pavilion. awakening from her dream, she becomes lovesick (xiangsi bing 相思病) and inconsolable in her longing for mengmei. she eventually pines away with a broken heart in the seclusion of her maidenly chamber in spite of the efforts to save her by a female daoist spiritual medium and her pharmacologist, teacher chen. before she dies, she paints a self-portrait which is interred under a stone in the garden alongside her remains beside a plum tree. of course, xianzu places the burial under a plum tree to reveal his belief in the love or marriage affinity between liniang and liu mengmei, whose name means “willow dreaming plum.”after her death, mengmei comes into the foreground of the play. we see him on his way to the imperial examination in hangzhou. but he falls ill at nanan and is given a resting-place in the du family garden. walking in the garden, he happens to discover liniangs portrait and he spends many hours of longing and fond gazing at her lovely form. immediately he develops a deep feeling that he knows the woman in the portrait from a dream in his past. one night, liniang as a ghost appears to him and yet they are able to renew the passionate relationship they enjoyed in their shared dream in the past. at her request, mengmei opens liniangs coffin and she is revived because she has found her love. the two young lovers marry in a hurry. then, worried by the news of a war that had spread to her fathers new governing district, liniang sends her husband to look for her parents, taking her portrait as an authentication of who he is. however, instead of being honored as his son-in-law, governor du has mengmei arrested and accuses him of robbing liniangs grave. later, even when liniang herself appears in front of her father, he persists in refusing to believe in her resurrection. finally, only with the help of the emperors testimony and royal decree does he acknowledge her identity and the two lovers marriage is sanctioned.the story of romeo and juliet is a glamorous story of romantic love at first sight followed by the two lovers dying for love. romeo and juliet are from the two feuding noble families in verona: the montagues and the capulets. at a masquerade ball in the house of capulet, romeo catches his first glimpse of juliet and is immediately overcome by her beauty. juliet likewise becomes lovesick and both pledge to seal their love by marrying. with the aid of friar laurence, they are married in secret.just after the wedding, a street brawl erupts between the two feuding factions. romeos friend, mercutio, is killed by juliets cousin, tybalt. in retaliation, romeo kills tybalt. as punishment for his crime, romeo is exiled to mantua. the lovers enjoy just one night together before he must leave or face execution. they part at dawn. meanwhile juliets parents insist that she marry lord paris. in order to avoid this, juliet feigns her own death as part of a plan to reunite with romeo and live happily in a new place. romeo gets the news second-hand that juliet has died. but what he does not receive is a letter from friar lawrence explaining the ploy. grief-stricken, he rushes back to verona, finds juliet apparently dead in the tomb, and he kills himself by drinking poison. juliet wakes up and finds her beloved romeo dead beside her, and she uses a dagger from romeos belt to kill herself. thus both characters die for love.reconstructing the theme of dying for love in the peony pavilionin the history of chinese literature numerous works are built around the theme of love. the famous tragic tale of liang shanbo and zhu yingtai 梁山伯与祝英台 in the seventeenth century is still a household favorite in china. people are carried away by the two lovers commitment to each other and their courageous choice of dying so as to be bound together. there are many ways in which the story of liang shanbo and zhu yintai is more like romeo and juliet than is the peony pavilion. when the peony pavilion was first published in the later part of the sixteenth century, it experienced an immediate success both in book form and in live performance. farley richmond has reminded me that the peony pavilion was written for the live theater and part of its aesthetic appeal lay in its use of music. indeed, much of the way the play was composed and structured depended on tang xianzus interest in it being suitable for performance. in the course of this study, i treat the play primarily as literary work, although i do mention the chuanqi genre of drama in my conclusion and i certainly feel that another study of the work that gives direct attention to the performance aspects of the play would have merit. the celebrated female writer lin yinning (1655-c. 1730) remarked, “when the published edition of the play first came out, there was no man of letters or scholar without a copy on his desk.”judith t. zeitlin, “shared dreams: the story of the three wives commentary on the peony pavilion,” harvard journal of asiatic studies 54 (june 1994): 128 the peony pavilion created an important new trend in chinese literature by developing the character of a female protagonist in such a manner as to promote the appreciation for her sentiment, passion and love (qing 情) in the male-female relationship. tang xianzu says in his preface to the peony pavilion:love is of course unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. the living may die of it, by its power the dead live again. love is not love at its fullest if one who lives it is unwilling to die for it, or if it cannot restore to life one who has so died. and must the love that comes in a dream necessarily be unreal? for there is no lack of dream lovers in this world. only for those whose love must be fulfilled on the pillow and for whom affection deepens only after retirement from office, is it entirely a corporeal matter.tang xianzu 湯顯祖the peony pavilion, mudan ting 牡丹亭, trans. cyril birch (bloomington: indiana university press, 2002), ix. hereafter referred to parenthetically as tang 2002.in the wake of the peony pavilion interest in qingfor a discussion of qing in the texts of this period see haiyan lee, “love or lust? the sentimental self in honglou meng,” chineseliterature: essays, articles, reviews 19 (dec. 1997): 85-11. dominated the literary life of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century in china. a considerable number of remarkable dramas and novels were produced in the qing dynasty which illustrated and reflected qing as love and passion between the lovers. among them, the most prominent were cao xueqings 曹雪芹 dream of red mansion (hongloumeng 紅樓夢), hong shengs 洪昇 palace of eternal youth (changshengdian 長生殿), and kong shangrens 孔尚任 peach blossom fan (taohua shan 桃花扇). in addition, many literary critics focused on this somewhat elusive concept, and it even became a trend in the late ming literary world to celebrate love, romance, and under certain circumstances, even passionate sex. for one example of a critic concerned with qing see pan zhiheng qihua 潘之恆 曲話 (pan zhihengs notes on theater), compiled by wang xiaoyi 汪效倚 (beijing. zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1988). for a more detailed survey of other critics see swatek, catherine swatek, peony pavilion onstage: four centuries in the career of a chinese drama (ann arbor, michigan: center for chinese studies, 2002), 1-25. the young heroine du liniang (also called bridal du) in the peony pavilion became an exemplary figure symbolizing for most writers in the late ming and early qing periods an unswerving pursuit of love and passion. she became an alter ego for her female audience because she made it acceptable for women to feel romantic passion, and to seek it outside of the constrictions of filial obedience. in this way, the peony pavilion as a literary work performed an important cultural function in the early qing. in the peony pavilion liniang is highly educated, sensuous yet respectable, and a strong willed young woman. she dies from pining away and seeking a desired lover whom she first conceived of in a dream. this type of conduct was not previously regarded as appropriate behavior for a chinese woman during this period, after all the nuerjing and other texts still affected and shaped the perception of women in the culture at the time of the peony pavilions writing. texts from this period such as the classic for girls (nuerjing 女兒經) and the book of filial piety for women (nu xiaojing 女孝經) still defined the roles of women up to the period of tang xianzus writing. see robin wang, images of women in chinese thought and culture: writings from the pre-qin period through the song dynasty (indianapolis.: hackett publishing, 2003). judith zeitlin says this about liniangs place in chinese literary tradition: “just as du liniangs love eventually transcended death in the play, so her effective power helped her to transcend her fictional status in the female imagination.”zeitlin, 129. liniang appealed to women in seventeenth and eighteenth century china because she successfully managed her own fate and overcame the repressive social conventions about women in order to fulfill her fantasies and aspirations. the drama even inspired many women to take up the literary arts as a serious profession and to present their own critical commentary on such a new image of a female figure. swateks essay covers several such commentaries. in the peony pavilion, liniangs lovesickness is derived from a dream in which she encounters the handsome mengmei and the playwright makes it clear that their meeting was predestined (tianming 天命). when mengmei sees her, he says, “lady i am dying of love for you!” (tang 2002, 47-48) it was common in the late ming and early qing to use a dream narrative to take the place of an actual memory, especially if the appropriateness of the remembered event was questionable morally or socially. this shared dream literary device in chinese drama is called dongjing meng hualu and it is traceable to zhang dais work in the song period. see li wai yee, enchantment and disenchantment: love and illusion in chinese literature (princeton, new jersey: princeton university press, 1993), 53. so, the setting of this encounter reminds us that the line between memory and dreaming is often blurred in works of this period.awakening from her dream, liniang becomes lovesick and restless. she pleads with heaven, “ah, heaven, let the dream i dreamed be not yet fled too far” (52). and she later laments, “how i long for that bygone dream” (57). she can not forget the exciting and passionate meeting with the man in her dream. she recalls, “yesterday, a random spring strollwho was it i met in my dream? so close we were, so loving, i was sure this was my lifes true love. now, when i quietly ponder on what passed, my spirit sinks and i despair”(56). liniang is experiencing a kind of lovesickness in which she feels weary in the morning and is very melancholy over the falling flowers in the garden. tang writes that her memory is of a hazy dream of petal-scented love (56). here we may think of the passage in dream of the red mansions (hongloumeng) in which the female character lin daiyu buried the fallen plum petals in her back garden symbolizing her depressed emotion over her inability to fulfill her love for jia baoyu. indeed, it is significant that after liniangs dream “the ground is carpeted with fallen petals” (57, 59, 60). this image signifies that her life is drifting away because of her love for mengmei. chunxiang (liniangs maidservant) says liniangs lovesickness is robbing her of her self (89). and her mother says, “why must a solitary daughter sicken and pine? delicate as a petal she should enjoy heavens mercy.” (75). but this association of liniang with the perishing petals reminds us that she is dying of love and that this dying is a loss of her self. she says, now my spirit stirslike the air of a mirageas the breeze sets to tinklingthe pendants below the eaves.set me a tablet upon my youthful gravetelling i died of longing. (100)in xiaoping yens recent novelistic retelling of the peony pavilion, yen has teacher chen return to consult with madame du after failing to heal liniang and chen says, “ive done my best, but nothing seems to be able to cure an ailment of the heart.”xiaoping yen, the peony pavilion: a novel based upon tang xianzus opera (dumont, new jersey: homa and sekey books, 2000), 92. yens work is not a translation but a contemporary novel based on the play. yen more directly than tang xianzu makes it clear that liniang pursues her own loves desire. in yens version, linianng leaves no doubt that she does not wish to submit to her fathers command to marry whomever he chooses in her discussion with fragrance (chunxiang) about the garden boy. (58) in fact, although chenxiang wants a man with money so that she can buy her freedom, liniang says, “a man with money may not love you.” liniang tells her that when she marries she will set chenxiang free and “you can marry whomever you like,.” (59) when chenxiang says to liniang that she hopes that du bao will find a good husband for liniang, liniang answers, “oh, no, i want to find a man myself.” and “i want to marry someone i like and someone who likes me.” and she even tells chenxiang that she thinks she can convince her father to allow her to do this. (59) mengmeis lovesickness is also clearly portrayed in the peony pavilion. having seen only liniangs portrait, he remembers a dream, musing to himself, “can it be true that what will come to pass was already perceived in a dream?” “ever since i set eyes on the beauty in the portrait i have longed for her day and night” (156). this memory is significant because it provides a clue to the sudden expression of dying for love that pours out of mengmei when he sees liniang for the first time in her ghostly body three years after her death. he says, “ah lady, lady, i die of longing for you!. surely there must be a love affinity fated between this lady and myself?” (156, 157) the shared dream of liniang and mengmei is the vehicle used by tang xianzu to show the powerful love between them and to reveal that both are so overwhelmed by love that they feel they will die for it. shen jing (1553-1610) in his revision of the peony pavilion chose the title the shared dream story (tongmeng ji). love is not only a reason for death in the peony pavilion, but it is also liniangs way back into life and mengmeis salvation from pin