The story follows a child bride turned widow, Dou E, who is wrongly convicted of crimes by a corrupt court official for actions perpetrated by a rejected suitor, Zhang the mule.

After her execution, three prophesied phenomena occur to prove her innocence, including blood raining from the sky, snow in June and a three-year drought.

After a visit from the ghost of Dou E, her father eventually brings the corrupt court official, a doctor and Mule Zhang to justice, thereby vindicating his daughter.

He blackmails Sai Lu Yi for poison by threatening to report the physician to the authorities for his earlier attempt to murder Dou E's mother-in-law.

Dou E is arrested and brought before the prefecture governor, Tao Wu, who subjects her to various tortures to force her to confess to the crime.

Dou E is posthumously proclaimed innocent while the guilty parties receive their due punishments: Sai Lu Yi is exiled to a distant land; Tao Wu is dismissed and barred from entering office again; Zhang Lü'er is given the death penalty.

The scholar Stephen H. West notes that the texts of Yuan drama were edited and "extensively altered" by Zang Maoxun (1550–1620), whose Yuanqu xuan (元曲選) became the standard anthology.

The play was directed by Justin Audibert, translated by Gigi Chang, and specially adapted by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig.