【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.

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