[
    {
        "id": 209596,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 253,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "231\n\nmusic, a dazzling transformation scene, and a rollicking harlequinade.\" It enlisted a great many people for the leads, chorus and orchestra.\n\nNot everyone in Hong Kong was happy about pantomimes. In 1891 in the \"Beauty and the Beast\" \"the indiscreet censure lately passed by the Bishop upon the Pantomime was noticed in a verse or so--and a comical but somewhat misplaced representative of his Lordship appeared in the Harlequinade\".\n\nThe A.D.C. tried its hand at light opera in 1894 with the performance of Gilbert and Clay's \"Princess Toto\". It was described, however, as \"vapid and unattractive\". The Choral Society had for some years been presenting light operas and had already given \"Iolanthe\" and \"The Gondoliers\". In subsequent years the A.D.C. did \"Trial by Jury\", \"Yeomen of the Guard\", \"His Excellency\", and \"The Gondoliers\".\n\nDuring this same period, along with the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, other currently popular musical plays were staged.\n\nTHE GENIUS OF MR. SINCLAIR\n\nWith more frequent visits of professional companies, the A.D.C. increasingly found it difficult to sustain interest and attendance. This resulted in financial losses and threatened the future of the Amateurs. A new era arrived when Mr. Walter Sinclair assumed direction of A.D.C. productions in 1912.\n\nSinclair was imaginative and venturesome and mounted productions that were different from those presented by the travelling companies. The A.D.C. took on new life.\n\nAmong Sinclair's innovations was his introduction to Hong Kong of the playwright Lord Dunsany. In 1921 he presented an evening's programme of four Dunsany plays. One of these was \"The Compromise of the King of the Golden Isle\". It was the play's world premiere. The setting was Chinese. During the interval preceding it, to set the mood, a group of Chinese amateur musicians played Chinese music. It was particularly noted that the music \"was not unpleasing, for people who have heard only the cymbals and tom-toms may find music in the sweetness of some of the native banjos and fiddles\".",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209612,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 269,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "1892/93\n\n―\n\n1893/94\n\n247\n\n\"Honour Bound\" (W. S. Gilbert and Sydney Grundy, 1880)\n\n12, 15 Nov. 1892\n\n\"On Bail\" a farce (W. S. Gilbert, 1877)\n\n26, 28, 30 Dec. 1893, 3, 6, 9, 16, 24 Jan. 1894\n\n\"Princess Toto\" (W. S. Gilbert and Clay, 1876)\n\n1894/95\n\n30 Jan. 4, 6, 9, 12, 16, 18, 23 Feb. 1895\n\n\"Robinson Crusoe\"\n\nPantomime:\n\n17, 20, 24 Apr. 1895 \"The Magistrate\" (A. W. Pinero, 1885)\n\n1895/96\n\n26, 28 Dec. 1895\n\n\"Dandy Dick\" (A. W. Pinero, 1887)\n\n8, 10, 20 Feb. 1896\n\n1888)\n\n1896/97\n\n\"Trial by Jury” (Gilbert and Sullivan, 1888)\n\n19, 21 Dec. 1896 — “Cups and Saucers\" (G. Grossmith, 1878)\n\ngiven in 1886.\n\n\"Charley's Aunt\" (Brandon Thomas, 1892)\n\n25 Feb. 1897 — \"Les Cloches de Carneville\" (H. B. Farnie and R. Reece, 1878)\n\n1897/98\n\n19 Nov. 1897\n\n1890)\n\nF\n\n1898/99\n\n19, 21 Feb. 1898\n\n—\n\n\"A Pair of Spectacles\" (Sidney Grundy, 1890)\n\n\"The Duchess of Bayswater and Co.\" comedietta (A. M. Heathcote, 1888)\n\n\"A Pantomime Rehearsal\" (C. Clay, 1891)\n\n17, 19 Nov. 1898 — “Our Bitterest Foe\" (G. C. Herbst, 1874)\n\n\"Sugar and Cream\" comedietta (J. P. Hurst, 1883) \"The Steeple Chase\" (J. M. Morton, 1865) given in 1874.\n\n―\n\n5, 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 18 Jan., 1, 3 Feb. 1899 pantomime \"The Yellow Dwarf, or Harlequin the Knave of Hearts\"\n\n1899/1900\n\n4, 6 Nov. 1899\n\n\"The Magistrate\" (A. W. Pinero, 1885) given in 1895.\n\n12, 13 Dec. 1899 \"The Mother In Law\" farcical comedy (G. R. Sims, 1881)\n\nJL\n\n12, 15, 17, 24, 26 Feb. 1900 \"Yeoman of the Guard\" (Gilbert and Sullivan, 1888)\n\n1900/01 24 Nov. 3 Dec. 1900—\n\n1901/02\n\n1902/03\n\n—\n\n―\n\n\"Our Flat\" (Mrs. M. Musgrove, 1889)\n\n15, 19 Nov. 1901 “Trying It On” farce (W. Brough)\n\n\"Plantation Revels\" minstrel variety\n\n13, 14, 15 Nov. 1902\n\n\"Liberty Hall\" drama (R. C. Carton, 1892)",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209614,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 271,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "249\n\n21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27 Mar. 1912 — \"The Gondoliers\" (Gilbert and Sullivan, 1889)\n\n1912/13 25, 26 Oct. 1912 \"A Pair of Spectacles\" (Sydney Grundy, 1890) given in\n\n1913/14 —\n\n1914/15 —\n\n17, 19, 21 Dec. 1912 \"An Ideal Husband\" (O. Wilde, 1895)\n\n25, 28, 29, 30 Oct., 1 Nov. 1913.\n\nHong Kong Mummers (personnel same as A.D.C.) \"Twelfth Night\" Shakespeare.\n\n21, 26 Feb. 1914 —\n\nCentennial Performance: Three Episodes \"A Privy Council\" (W. Drury and R. Price, 1904). \"Between the Soup and the Savoury\" (Gertrude Jennings, 1910) \"The Open Door\" (Alfred Sutro, 1906)\n\n7, 10, 14 Nov. 1914\n\n—\n\n\"The Blue Bird\" a fairy play (M. Maeterlinck, transl. by A. T. Mattes, performed London 1909)\n\n2, 6, 9 Jan. 1915\n\n\"Snow White and the Frog Prince\" a fairy ballet in 3 parts and 4 tableaux.\n\n1915/16 — 14, 16, 11 Mar. 1916 — \"An Angel in the House\" (B. M. Hastings and E. Phillpotts, 1915):\n\n1916/17 —\n\n15, 16, 18, 30 Dec, 1916 - \"Kismot\" oriental, spectacular (E. Knoblauch, 1911)\n\n1917/18 23 Feb. 1918\n\n1918/19\n\nA.D.C. Mr. A. P. Stokes assisted by members of \"Acid Drops\"\n\n\"Five Birds in a Cage\"\n\n\"The Rest Cure\"\n\n23 Apr. 1918 \"The Witness for the Defence\" (A. E. W. Mason, 1911)\n\n7, 9 Nov, 1918 - \"The Barton Mystery\" a spoofic fantasy (Walter Hackett, 1916)\n\n21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29 Mar. 1919 \"Pinkie and the Fairies\" a fairy play. (W. G. Robertson, music F. Norton, 1909)\n\n1919/20 — apparently no production.\n\n1920/21\n\n28, 30 Oct., 3 Nov. 1920 Four Dunsany Plays\n\n\"The Golden Doom\" (1912)\n\n\"The Glittering Gate\" (1909)\n\n\"The Lost Silk Hat\" (1913)\n\namateur musicians:\n\nInterval Chinese \"Compromise of the King of the Golden Isle\", world premiere",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212304,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 246,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "223\n\nthe 'Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade',\n\nA romantic web has been woven around Jardine's, far more than any other western firm in the Far East. This romanticism stretches to fiction, and Taipan and Noble House, both written by James Clavell, are reputed to be based on the 'Princely Hong'. Also a play named Poppy, about the Opium War of 1840, with comic Gilbert and Sullivan style songs, was staged in London in the early 1980s.\n\nAnother better-known song, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' written by Noel Coward in 1932, has it that:\n\n\"In Hong Kong They strike a gong\n\nAnd fire a noonday gun\n\nThere is no agreement, however, as to where the Hotchkiss Mark I, three-pound, quick-firing naval gun came from. Some say documents prove that before 1961 it was owned by the Hong Kong Marine Police. Others believe it came from the Royal Navy although Jardine's maintain the Senior Service has no record of the gun.\n\nThe colourful myth that appears in guidebooks is that a penalty was imposed on Jardine Matheson by an irate British admiral because the firm fired a salute to its chief manager as he sailed into the harbour. Another tale has it that the gun was fired to honour the arrival of its opium-carrying fleet. From then on, so both stories go, the Navy compelled Jardine's to fire a gun daily. As A.I. Diamond, previously of the Public Records Office in Hong Kong, wrote:\n\n\"Neither version explains by what authority the Navy could have compelled Jardine Matheson and Company to fire a gun at all let alone daily at noon, presumably in perpetuity.\"\n\nThe true account is quite different. In the British Empire the armed forces used to fire guns at set hours to signify the time. In Hong Kong this practice stopped in 1869 because, by then, many people owned watches, and to save the cost of gunpowder. An extract from the Hong Kong Daily Press, dated January 3, 1870, records:\n\nIt is interesting and just to note that the renewing of the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]