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.
    Although Zhu was an outstanding woman in the feudal China, with her courage to pursue free life and ideal love, she faced an environment armed with a deeply-rooted ideology of male-chauvinism, which barred her from realizing her dreams[1][P101].
Therefore, going to school for learning, which is a simple thing today, was quite difficult even prohibitive for a woman at that time. She could only succeed in her wish by disguising herself as a young man. When Zhu asked for studying in school like other boys, her sister-in-law created difficulties for her even ridiculed her, saying Zhu would lose her chastity during the period. Then Zhu had to put a flower into a flower vase and swear that if she behaved improperly, the flower would die, and if not, it would keep alive until she came back. Later on, she went to school. But her sister –in-law did not give up, she put some boiled water into the vase in the hope that the flower would die at once. Fortunately, her plot failed, the flower grew more and more beautiful. This episode before the later love tragedy signified in advance the huge feudal pressure on Zhu[2][P34]. In such an environment, Zhu’s pursuit of love was not like Romeo and Juliet’s. Zhu fell in love with Liang, but because of the feudalism as well as her family status, Zhu could not show her love openly. Compared with Romeo and Juliet, she was brought up to be reserved. Therefore, her love to Liang could only be developed little by little, slowly and subconsciously. 英语作文