RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 187 less than sixteen of his farces were staged during the years 1850-1865, including of course the maligned Box and Cox which is, ironically, nearly his only piece that is still occasionally seen today. Closely following were the burlesques of Henry James Byron, written in quite a different style from Morton's farces, with many more puns in the text which makes them sometimes awkward reading, although one can feel amazement about the author's inventiveness. Yet, to see well-established works like Verdi's Il Trovatore, with its beautiful music, mangled into !!! Treated Il Trovatore, or Shakespeare's Macbeth and King John into The Babes in the Wood makes one feel a little bit queasy. Of especial interest to the Shanghai residents must have been his Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp for he had built the entire action **around puns on China tea and he invented widow Twankay as a pun on one of the ports central to the China trade" [Shanghai presumably — JHJ]. Byron was of course not the only one who made himself into a debaser of tragedy. What is one to think of Robert Bough's Medea or the Best of Mothers with a Brute of a Husband, the title alone of which causes one to shudder. But then, this was obviously what an overwhelming majority of the public asked for, both in Britain and overseas. The British capital teemed with small, and not so small, theatres that catered for the wishes of the low and lower middle classes and their first demand was to be entertained after a hard day's work: who cared for a complex five-act Shakespearean tragedy people referred to laugh their heads off with Slasher and Crasher and Cool as a Cucumber. In British outposts abroad the attitude of the public was not very different, as is shown in this article for Shanghai. A comparison with Singapore and Hong Kong shows that tastes there were also exclusively in the direction of farce and comedy and it is not to be wondered that sometimes the same pieces were chosen, like William Rhodes' Bombastes Furioso (Sh.: 28.1.1851 and 5.5.1858; Hong Kong: 1.12.1848; Singapore: May 1844 and 25.5.1846) and Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep (Sh.: 23.4.1857; 15.3.1860; H.K.: 3.1.1861; Sp.: 1862). That not all plays were to the liking of the local paper's critics has already been discussed. Apparently, no efforts were made from among the foreign community to write original comedies, a fact which was deplored by the Herald when it thought that there are certainly men capable of such mental exercise as the writing of burlesque. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 240 RODWELL, James Thomas Gooderham (d. 1825) "A Race for Dinner" (15.4.1828). P: Announced in March 1854 but not performed. "The Young Widow or A Lesson for Lovers" (1.11.1824), P: 27.4.1865 SELBY, Charles (1802?-1863) "The Boots at the Swan" (5.4.1843). P: 14.12.1865 **A Fearful Tragedy in the Seven Dials". P: 15.2.1860 **A Lady and a Gentleman in a Peculiarly Perplexing Predicament" (9.8.1841), P: 13.2.1864 **The Unfinished Gentleman'' (1.12.1834). P: 17.6.1865 SHAKESPEARE, William (1564-1616) "King John" (1594–1596). P: 12.11.-18.11.1864 (Prison scene, Act IV.1 only) **Richard III" (1592-1593). P: 26.4.1865 (Act V only) SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley (1751 1816) **The Rivals" (17.1.1775). P: 28.9.1858; 23.11.1864 SUTER, William E. (1812-1882) ? "Lady Audley's Secret" (22.2.1863). P: 28.12.1864 TALFOURD, Francis (1827-1862) "A Household Fairy" (24.12.1859), P: 26.11.1864 TAYLOR, Tom (1817-1880) ? "Cinderella" (12.5.1845). P: 12.11.-18.11.1864; 28.4.1865 "Still Waters Run Deep" (3.3.1856). P: 23.4.1857; 15.3.1860 TOBIN, John (1770-1804) ? "The Honeymoon" (31.1.1805). P: 19.4.1865 TOWNLEY, Rev. James (1714-1778) "High Life below Stairs" (31.10.1759), P: 21.4.1851 WEBSTER, Benjamin Nottingham (1797-1882) ? "Aurora Floyd' (11.3.1863). P: 26.11.1864; 17.4.1865 ? "The Golden Farmer or the Last Crime" (26.12.1832). P: 8.10.1857 WILLIAMS, Thomas John (1824-1874) "Nursery Chickweed" (12.11.1859), P: 28.3-5.4.1865 "On and Off" (6.6.1861). P: 25.4.1864 APPENDIX II An alphabetical list of plays staged in Shanghai 1850-1865 The Adventures of Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Rising of 1745: N.N.; 13.6.1864. Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp: H.J. Byron; 2.9.1864, 19.11.1864, 29.4.1865, Anything for a Change: C.W. Brooks; 15.5.1854. Apartments: W. Brough; 23.3.1853. The Area Belle: W. Brough & A. Halliday; 30.9.1865. Attic Story: J.M. Morton; 6.5.1852. Aurora Floyd: C.S. Cheltnam? C.H. Hazlewood? J.B. Johnstone? B. Webster? 26.11.1864, 17.4.1865. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 ARTICLES LAUGHTER ACROSS THE GREAT WALL: A COMPARISON OF CHINESE AND WESTERN HUMOUR DAN WATERS Good humour may be said to be one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society. William Makepiece Thackery With English cooking you boil the chicken, throw away the water and eat the chicken. With Chinese cooking you boil the chicken, throw away the carcass and drink the soup. Anon. Terminology and scope of paper The word 'humour' harks back to the ancient Greek theory and early Middle-age English when health, disease and human emotion were associated with 'wet' qualities within the body. Depression was said to be brought on by an excess of melancholy, black bile, one of the 'four humours' comprising blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile. Black bile, it was believed, could be dispelled by laughter (Muir, 1990; XXVIII)(see Appendices A and B of this paper). It appears the equivalent of the word 'humour' (with a similar meaning) only existed in the English language and the word yau muk (you mo), meaning humour, did not exist in the Chinese language until it was introduced by the Chinese scholar, Lin Yutang, in 1924 (Chen Wangheng and Shu Jianhua 1993:10). Lin Yutang's writing is said to have been greatly influenced by George Bernard Shaw (Chen Wangheng and Shu Jianhua 1993:10). ... Men and women have been chortling their heads off since prehistoric times. Shakespeare wrote (Twelfth Night, III, I): "Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun. It shines everywhere." Yet in spite of humour being infectious and an important part of everyday life, Dr ================================================================================