What do you think of Tang Xianzu being named the Oriental Shakespeare ?

The history of human drama is very long in both the East and the West, but the history of Western drama in China is not long. In order to let drama lovers, learners, and researchers who are dominated by Western thinking have a more intuitive understanding of the achievements of Tang Xianzu in drama, some scholars directly quote "Oriental Shakespeare" to introduce it, and give laymen, beginners, and cross-cultural people to the circle of fans, and I think it is okay to introduce it basically.

At the Geneva Conference that year, *** introduced the Yue Opera "Liang Zhu" to foreign guests, saying that this is China's "Romeo and Juliet", in fact, Liang Zhu's story and "Romeo and Juliet" still have many incommensurates, such as Juliet is not pretending to be a girl**. But it is convenient for foreigners to understand. In addition, Zhao Jingshen's "Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare" mentions five similarities between Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare:

First, the years of birth and death are almost the same (1550-1616 for the former and 1564-1616 for the latter).

Second, it occupies the highest position in the opera industry. Third, the content of the creation is good at drawing on the works of others. Fourth, they do not abide by the rules and precepts of drama creation.

Fifth, the play is the most sad and moving. From the perspective of artistic achievement, China also has its own art evaluation system and assessment of artistic status.

What should be compared is: is Shakespeare's theatrical status in the West equivalent to Tang Xianzu's theatrical status in the East? It is not whether Tang Xianzu's dramatic achievements can be compared with Shakespeare according to Western theories of drama.

Shakespeare clearly has an advantage in numbers, and from a linguistic point of view, Oriental poetry is more demanding than that of English poetry. On the one hand, our literary works focus more on the beauty of their own prophecies, and on the other hand, Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion was controversial because of the lack of strict rhythms. Now, from the perspective of playwriting, both of them have created immortal works in their respective countries.

This kind of term is generally the result of "export to domestic sales". Many memorial halls and facilities now require bilingual explanations in English and Chinese for the convenience of foreign visitors. Then the concept of "this person's status in the history of Chinese theater is equivalent to Shakespeare's status in England" in English is the most vivid and appropriate, so that foreign visitors can understand it at a glance.

However, when ordinary people translate (mainly referring to the written text on the display board, the narrator's oral style has its own style) and are accustomed to paying attention to the Chinese and English explanations to match each other (in fact, it doesn't have to be so at all, but it is such an obsessive-compulsive disorder, perhaps the pot 233 left by the English test translation questions), so this sentence is translated into Chinese and added, but it gives people a feeling of "nothing to rub the hot spot of foreigners". Therefore, the long written explanations of some tourist attractions are either foreign in Chinese or local in English; Most of the time they pay too much attention to the comparison between Chinese and English when writing words or translations, rather than writing separately for their respective target groups. Of course, it's not wrong, it's just a little awkward.

Tang Xianzu is known as China's "Shakespeare", in 1964, Xu Shuofang's "Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare", pointed out that Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare era are the same, but the specific drama creation tradition is different, the former according to the score and rhythm to fill in the poems and lyrics, the latter in the open form of drama to play a brilliant pen, that Tang Xianzu's creative space and difficulty are greater.

From 1986 to 1987, Xu Shuofang studied Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare twice, linking the relationship between the playwright and the development of Chinese and Western history and culture, pointing out that the feudal society of the Ming Dynasty in which Tang Xianzu lived was much more closed and backward than Shakespeare's Elizabethan era.

There are also many people who have written a lot on the topic of "Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare", and even compared and analyzed the writing techniques and plot structures of "The Peony Pavilion" and "Romeo and Juliet" as a special topic of comparative literature. In fact, speaking of it, it is nothing more than the poem given by Tian Han in 1959 to Linchuan, Jiangxi Province to visit the "Tang Family Jade Tea Hall Monument": "Du Li how Juliet, the deep love has really come to Megan."

While many have called Tang Xianzu the "Shakespeare of China" largely because of their great achievements in dramaturgy, scholars have also reminded us that there is also a historical coincidence, as both died in 1616 AD. Their deaths in the same year may seem irrelevant to their respective contributions and status in literature and art, but highlighting the chronological coincidences and symbolizing the "same year" as a time symbol of cultural heritage does help to consolidate the status of classicization.

Shakespeare's words, because it was a great poet and writer in the Middle Ages, has many great works, and Tang Xianzu is called the Chinese Shakespeare, because of his works, Du Liniang and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet are more similar. There is also the popular opera "Peony Pavilion", Tang Xianzu's pen and ink did not stop at showing Du Liniang's sad spring feelings, he described in detail that she met the scholar Liu Mengmei in a dream after that, the two were happy, and felt sad and lonely after waking up from the dream.

Tang Xianzu despised the feudal magnates all his life and often offended celebrities. In his early years, he took the Jinshi exam, but he was defeated because he refused to accept Zhang Juzheng, who was in charge of the dynasty. After Zhongjinshi, he also refused to be courted by Zhang Siwei and Shen Shixing, who were in charge of the government at that time.

When he was in Nanjing, he did not associate with the brothers Wang Shizhen and Shimao, who were already very famous at that time, and even refused to write poetry at the public banquet held by Wang.

In his later years, he was indifferent and poor, and refused to deal with county officials. This style of personality made him have close contacts with Gu Xiancheng and Zou Yuanbiao, who were members of the Donglin Party who were strict in their conduct and criticized the corrupt politics of the time, and also made him respect such "Geng Jie" or "indulgent" figures as Hai Rui and Xu Wei. This character trait of Tang Xianzu is also clearly reflected in his works.

Tang Xianzu's representative work is the Peony Pavilion.

In the middle of the sixteenth century, the bourgeois state of England produced a great dramatist and writer, William Shakespeare, whose birth brought new vitality and vitality to the English theater. His birth had a very great impact on Britain and the world. However, there was also a great dramatist like Shakespeare in China at that time, which also had a huge impact on China at that time.

In order to remember and commemorate this great dramatist, future generations will call him the Shakespeare of the East, so who does this Shakespeare of the East refer to?

In the middle of the 16th century, when China was under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, and as we all know, the drama of the Ming Dynasty was very high, and it produced many dramatists at that time, including the Shakespeare of the East--- Tang Xianzu, who wrote many plays in his lifetime, which won him a place in the history of Chinese and world literature.

Tang Xianzu's "Peony Pavilion" and "Romeo and Juliet" have the same effect.

Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare were both masters of playwriting, representing the development of English and Chinese drama.

Tang Xianzu's main creative achievements are in opera, and his representative work is "The Peony Pavilion" (also known as "The Soul Return"), which together with "The Story of Handan", "The Story of Nanke" and "The Story of the Purple Hairpin", is known as the "Four Dreams of Jade Tea Hall", also known as the "Four Dreams of Linchuan". Except for the writing era of "The Legend of the Purple Hairpin", it is not easy to determine the writing time of the rest of the "Three Dreams", and there are still different views in the academic circles.

In evaluating Shakespeare's influence, we should think that without him, there would be no work of him at all.

According to statistics, Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words. It made extensive use of folk languages (such as ballads, slang, old proverbs, and comical prose), with attention to absorbing foreign words, and making extensive use of metaphors, metaphors, and puns. Many of the sentences in Shakespeare's play have become idioms, allusions, and aphorisms in modern English.

Comparatively speaking, his early plays liked to use ornate and sonorous phrases; Later mature works are more handy, not only using rich and diverse language to appropriately and vividly express the characteristics of different characters, but also using simple and natural words to convey gripping feelings and thoughts.

Although Shakespeare wrote in English, he was a truly world-famous figure. While English is not exactly a world language, it is closer to a world language than any other language. Moreover, Shakespeare's works have been translated into many literatures, and many countries have read his works and staged his plays.

In the preface to a certain edition of Shakespeare's plays, there is a passage that reads:

Through images with powerful artistic power, he reveals the character of his typical protagonists, who at the same time have distinct personalities, from their actions and contradictions. The intense humanist thought radiating from the play, as well as the remarkable and bold artistic technique, have a significance that has long since transcended the confines of his time and country.

With such an impact on the world of literature, it is no wonder that his friend, the famous dramatist Ben Jonsson, said: "He belongs not only to one era, but to the whole century." ”

Same 1Both masters of theatre showed optimism in their early works, and pessimistic and disillusioned worldviews in their later works.

2.In the pursuit of love, young men and women in Tang Opera and Shakespeare often clash fiercely with the traditional forces represented by the "father" figure, and then realize their good wishes through "dreams".

3.Both Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare used supernatural spirits to facilitate the fulfillment of love dreams, such as the goddess of flowers in The Purple Hairpin and The Peony Pavilion, the fairy king in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Jupitt in Cymbelin.

4.Both Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare expressed the transcendence of love over life and death in their works. In Heidegger's terminology, Du Liniang in The Peony Pavilion and Ophelia in Hamlet both experience "existence towards death" in their pursuit of love. 、

Difference 1 character building.

2. Comparison of plot progression.

3.Rhetorical comparison of language.