湯顯祖《牡丹亭》傳奇以明代闕名的文言小說〈杜麗娘記〉為藍本，在杜麗娘與柳夢梅愛情故事的主線上，繼承了小說原作「夢中情」、「人鬼情」、「人間情」的三段式情節結構，但卻以「至情」理想為指導，採取刪略、增飾、衍生、反諷等手法，對文言小說進行了「點鐵成金」式的改寫。在「夢中情」部分，《牡丹亭》傳奇重構了杜麗娘的客觀生存環境，並且更為詳盡地揭示了杜麗娘的精神覺醒過程，充分揭示杜麗娘之所以「出生入死」的社會文化背景和心理性格動因。在「人鬼情」部分，《牡丹亭》傳奇著重刻畫柳夢梅與杜麗娘先天註定的「夫婦分緣」，並展現了杜麗娘鬼魂自覺、主動、積極地追求戀情與實現婚姻的過程。在「人間情」部分，《牡丹亭》傳奇對小說原有的情節內容進行了全方位的改寫，重新建構了柳、杜婚姻的團圓結局，生動地描寫了杜麗娘「從一而終」愛情理想的最終實現過程。全劇充分地展開了杜麗娘的個性意識與現實社會、文化傳統之間的對立與衝突，具有深刻的文化意蘊。

The real source of Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavilion is a literary language tale named The Story of Du Liniang. The Peony Pavilion goes on the plots and structures of the story, but gives the transformation in writing by ingenious use of decreasting, increaseing, fabricating, and irony. In the paragraph of “the love in the dream”, The Peony Pavilion renewed Du’s exist circumstance and described the process of Du’s spiritual awakenig more exhaustively. In the paragraph of “the love between man and ghost”, The Peony Pavilion emphasized the marriage of Liu Mengmei and Du Liniang gone by destiny, further more emerged the process of Du Liniang pursuing love and achieving marriage consciously, initiatively and actively. In the paragraph of “the love in the world”, The Peony Pavilion wholly rewrote the original plots, rebuild the reunion end of the marriage of Liu and Du and lively described the success of Du’s love ideal about “be faithful to a husband till death”. The play fully spread the antagonism between the cult of emotions and the society, the individual consciousness and the cultural tradition.