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There were four classics of poetic drama in Chinese history, that is, Romance of the Western Bower, Dream in Peony Pavilion, Love in the Long Life Hall and Blood Stains on Peach Blossom Fan. The subject of the Romance is the conflict between love and honor of a feudal family, and that of the Dream is the life and death of a lover. In the former, love triumphs over honor, and in the latter it further triumphs over death. In the meantime, we have in the Western countries Shakespeare's tragedies in rivality with Chinese classics, though they are two hundred years later than the Romance but earlier than Long Life Hall and Blood-stained Fan. In the Romance, the lovers are separated by the mother's idea of honor and re-united by the hero's success in the civil service examinations, while in Shakespeare's tragedy, Romeo and Juliet are separated by enmity between their parents but re-united by death. The happy ending of the Romance shows the progress of Chinese civilization while the tragic end of Romeo and Juliet hints at the conquest of enmity by reason which foretells the triumph of realistic and scientific spirit. Here we can see the different development of Oriental and Occidental civilisation.
The author of the Dream in Peony Pavilion was a contemporary of Shakespeare and the Peony Pavilion is his representative work while Shakespeare's is Hamlet. Can their representative works be compared? Hamlet begins with the revival of the dead king who tells his son how he was poisoned by his brother who usurped his throne and married his wife. The son is not sure of the truth of what the dead king said, so we have the well-known monologue in Act III:
To be or not to be — that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.
Here to be may mean to take arms and not to be, to suffer; the outrageous fortune may refer to the murder of his father, his uncle's usurpation of the throne and his mother's remarriage. He hesitates about what to do: whether he should suffer for the love of his mother or rise to revenge the death of his father. Here we see the conflict in his mind or contradiction in his inner world. Besides, there is conflict in the outer world. For instance, we see the contradiction between uncle and nephew in the following dialogue:
Uncle: But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son —
Nephew: A little more than kin and less than kind!
Uncle: How is it that the Clouds still hang on you?
Nephew: Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun.
The usurper uncle is unwilling, but he cannot refuse, to call his nephew my son, nor is the nephew willing to be so called, but he is very clever at reply by playing on the words kin and kind, son and sun, implying that the uncle is not a kind kin, and that it would be too much for himself to have been called son by his father and mother, and now by his uncle, who is compared to the clouds that overshadow the sun (son). There is conflict not only between uncle and nephew but also between mother and son, for example, we may read the following dialogue:
Mother: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Hamlet playing on words has offended his uncle but the mother's second marriage with her husband's brother has offended her first husband. Here we find the contradictions complicated.
In the Dream of Peony Pavilion the contradiction is simple. We find more contradictions in the outer world than in the inner one. There are contradictions between the heroine and her father, her mother, and her teacher, more contradictions than in her own mind. For instance, we may read the teacher's song sung to the tune of Changing Roles in Scene 2, Act II.
Of the Six Classics The Book of Poetry is true
To life. It shows what a noble lady should do.
The Story of the Lord of Corn
Tells her not to forget by whom she's born.
She should be pious to her mother,
And not be jealous of another,
Be virtuous as a queen
Whenever she is seen.
At cock's crow she should rise,
and grieve when swallow away flies.
……
She would wash powder off her face
And live with grace.
She'd be a faithful wife
And lead a virtuous life.
……
The three hundred poems in The Book of Poetry, in a word
teach you to do no wrong.
Does the heroine believe what her teacher says? Read what her maid says in Scene 3, Act II:
When the teacher taught my young mistress The Book of Poetry; she sighed at the following verse:
By riverside are cooing
A pair of turtledoves;
A good young man is wooing
A fair maiden he loves.
Closing the book, she said, here we can see the heart of a sage and the feeling shared alike by the ancient and the modern.
That is to say, she may not believe what his teacher tells her, to lead a virtuous life. What is more, we may read her own monologue in Scene 4, Act II:
O Heaven! Now I believe spring is stirring the heart. I have read in long or short poems of ancient days that maidens were moved in spring and grieved in autumn. Now I understand the reason why I'm sixteen years of age, but where is the young man who would win the laureate for me, or fly up to the moon to woo the beauty in the silver palace?
This monologue reveals the contradiction of love and virtue in her heart. When love triumphs over virtue in the end, she feels no contradiction any more. This shows there is more contradiction in the outer world than in the inner world in the Peony Pavilion. The play begins with a dream of love, follows by her death for love and ends by her revival and marriage with her lover. It may be called a trilogy of love while Shakespeare's tragedy may be called a trilogy of enmity and death, for it begins with the revival of the dead king for revenge, follows with the performance of the murder on the stage and ends by the death of the hero and his mother and his uncle.
Comparing these two trilogies, we can see the difference between the Chinese and English dramatic works is one between love and hate (or virtue and revenge), and between the inner and the outer worlds. As to the characterization, the Chinese characters are simple while the English ones are complicated. As to the language, in Shakespeare, we find more play on words, while in the Chinese play more comparisons are used, for instance:
He leaned on the rock by lakeside,
I stood like a jade statue vivified.
He carried away his jade mate
Who might in warm sunlight evaporate.
In short, they may be compared in four aspects: plot, characteriza-tion, situation and language.