Li Tiangen and His Opera Wedding Night with Hoary Head

The dramatist Li Tiangen of the Mid Qing dynasty had a variety of plays.The opera Wedding Night with Hoary Head was based on a true story of the Ming dynasty,and had a similar subject with later operas of Notes of Chastity and Wedding of Hoary Heads.However,they have totally different original stories.Based on the script information,the paper makes a textual research on the evolution of the two kinds of plays.It points out that the opera narrates scholars' dreamy business between the traditional beliefs and social reality.