‘What’s in a name’: The performance traditions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Tang Xianzu’s Mudan ting

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and a coeval Chinese play, Tang Xianzu’s Mudan ting (Peony Pavilion, 1598), share a similar storyline of forbidden love; both plays have been alive on the stage for more than 400 years, and have attracted a succession of adaptations and rewrites. Following a hint in the advertisement for Romeo and Juliet, the 18th century actor David Garrick heavily cut and simplified the play as a tragic tale of ‘star-cross’d lovers’, and almost all productions of Mudan ting have reduced the play to a series of excerpts telling a clichéd story of ‘talented scholar and beautiful maiden’ living happily after ‘a grand union’. This phenomenon of cutting and rewriting reflects a limited understanding of Shakespeare’s and Tang Xianzu’a dramaturgy. Besides, previous comparative studies of the two plays have been confined to the page, with little consideration of the stage, let alone audience response. With the stage and the audience in mind, this thesis compares the dramaturgical structure of Romeo and Juliet and Mudan ting, focusing on the juxtaposition of different generic elements and mises en scène. In the process, I integrate my understanding of Shakespeare’s and Tang Xianzu’s own approaches, with discussions of neglected aspects of drama theories by both Aristotle and by the Qing-dynasty Chinese drama theorist, Li Yü. The latter has often been marginalised in world theatre discourse. My investigations will demonstrate that Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu share many similar dramaturgical solutions to the problem of staging a play, and that these solutions are likewise expounded by Aristotle and Li Yü. Despite the thematic and dramaturgical similarities between Romeo and Juliet and Mudan ting, the two plays are received differently today. Whereas Romeo and Juliet is adapted around the world to address rampant social problems such as racial animosity and forced marriage, even the most avant-garde productions of Mudan ting (by Peter Sellars and Chen Shi-zheng) are still situated within, and judged against, the constraints of the kunqu (kun opera) performance tradition. Drawing on the successful experience of producing and adapting Romeo and Juliet from a cross-cultural perspective, this thesis explores the challenges and benefits of producing Mudan ting in today’s theatre practices, starting by questioning the antithesis between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ theatre forms in China. Overall, this thesis argues that if future productions of both plays are to speak to their audiences, the key is to understand Shakespeare’s and Tang Xianzu’s humour as reflected in their dramaturgical mix of genres and mises en scène, and to use the play to actively explore contemporary issues in the way that both dramatists did. For the future development of world theatre, it is also important to integrate marginal theorists and neglected theories. Although Aristotle, Shakespeare, Tang Xianzu, and Li Yü were writing in diverse contexts, the commensurabilities of the drama theories and practices found in them raise interesting questions about human cognition and emotion processes.

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ORCID for Huimin Wang: orcid.org/0000-0002-0403-3489

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