Seeking Dreams, Pursuing Love——On The Peony Pavilion and A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the history of Chinese and Western drama,Peony Pavilion and Midsummer Night's Dream are expressing the themes of resisting the feudalist mentality regarding marriage, and the pursuit of freedom of love and personality liberation with the assistance of the form of dreams. However, due to the differences of the social and historical conditions, cultural backgrounds and social contexts of the writers, as well as the divergence between individual thoughts and aesthetics in terms of the themes of love in the two plays, Midsummer Night's Dream is more advanced than The Peony Pavilion; and in terms of the expression of dream, The Peony Pavilion is simpler than Midsummer Night's Dream in its plotline. The similarities and differences between Chinese and Western theatrical aesthetics are fully reflected in the two plays.