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zation 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 k上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 下一页
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