Talk:Spring Willow Society

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 talk 07:38, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the Spring Willow Society probably staged the first full-length Shakespearean play in China?

• Source: *Liu, Siyuan (2007). "Adaptation as Appropriation: Staging Western Drama in the First Western-Style Theatres in Japan and China". Theatre Journal. 59 (3): 411–429. doi:10.1353/tj.2007.0159. JSTOR 25070065. The significance of Lu's Othello also lies in the fact that it was most likely the first production of a full Shakespearean play in China, not a dramatization based on Lin Shu's influential rendition of the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare.

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Ho Chung Kin

Created by Crisco 1492 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 734 past nominations.

 — Chris Woodrich (talk) 16:36, 12 January 2025 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article passes content check, hook is interesting enough. Thank you Crisco. Regards, Jeromi Mikhael 18:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Spring Willow Society/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Crisco 1492 (talk · contribs) 16:11, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kisseran (talk · contribs) 07:58, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi! I'll take this review.

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

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Overall an interesting read and very well researched. The only slight concerns are with prose.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, grammar, and understandability): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   See below for prose comments.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable, as shown by a source spot-check.

   a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

   Near-spotless spot check. Earwig flags nothing except a single proper name in the references.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Two appropriate images indisputably in the public domain, with appropriate captions.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Spot check

This table lists 10 random passages from throughout the article (20.0% of 50 total passages). These passages contain 10 inline citations (20.0% of 50 in the article). Generated with the Veracity user script.

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
Drama was perceived as better able to reach the common person than written literature, which relied on literacy that was uncommon in contemporary China. It thus occupied a special place in the modernization effort, with the philosopher Chen Duxiu arguing in 1905 that "theater is a big school for the world, and actors are teachers of the people."
2		Yu 2009, p. 2.		Y	Checks out, although I'm not sure if "philosopher" is the word I'd use to introduce Chen Duxiu.
Generally, these students were not in Japan to study theatre, but drama was popular as a means of improving their language skills.
6	a	Liu 2013, p. 39.		Y
Spring Willow's first performance was an adaptation of the third act of Alexandre Dumas fils' The Lady of the Camellias (1852).
11		Liu 2006, p. 344; Ouyang 1984, p. 142		Y
Desiring to build on the success of this performance, Spring Willow decided to adapt a longer story to stage.
14	a	Ouyang 1984, p. 142.		Y	Can long and big (大) be used interchangeably here? The source only mentions that it took a lot of people, not that it was necessarily longer.
The show was performed on 1 and 2 June 1907 at the Hongō-za theatre,
18		Yu 2009, p. 4.		Y
Through 1909, Spring Willow continued to stage stories, albeit under the name Shenyou Society.
22		Ouyang 1984, p. 152.		Y
which were amplified through dialogue that predicted the end of tyranny.
25		Liu 2007, p. 425.		Y
However, some stories – such as Black Slave's Cry to Heaven – did include scripts and fully written dialogue.
29		Ouyang 1984, p. 146.		Y
With such an emphasis on European stories and styles, the troupe had little success with contemporary audiences,
15	e	Liu 2010.		Y
Black Slave's Cry to Heaven has been canonized as the first Western-style Chinese drama,
35		Liu 2006, p. 343; Yu 2009, p. 2		*	Yu 2009 explicitly states that it was not the first Western-style play. This could probably fixed if you said huaju explicitly, which I would recommend regardless since I think it is barely a little too much WP:EGG. There's a difference between being the first Western-style play and being canonized as the first Western-style play; one is a statement of precedent, and one is a statement of socio-political treatment (similar to how Darah dan Doa is treated as the first "Indonesian" film, even though full-length productions started almost 25 years earlier). I've imported the footnote from the article on the play to make the distinction clearer.

Prose

• which relied on literacy that was uncommon in contemporary China → since literacy was uncommon in China at the time — it goes without saying that literature requires literacy
  • Refactored. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• introduced to China through cultural interchange — this should be elaborated or cut because it seems redundant to state that a cultural item is introduced to somewhere through cultural interchange
  • Not done. There's also the possibility of a cultural practice emerging separately, which this rules out. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
    • Apologies, I meant that if a cultural item is introduced, then it feels redundant to state that it was through cultural interchange. On a second read though I can see the argument for more elaboration being superfluous. Kisseran (talk) 12:33, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• ideal for such reform — what reform?
  • Modernization. REfactored. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• Around this time, Chinese students began studying in Japan, increasing from three in 1896 to a thousand in 1903 — this sentence needs to be reworded or split apart, perhaps with a sentence like "The number of Chinese students in Japan increased...".
  • Refactored. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• it ultimately threatened
  • Trimmed. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• Spring Willow continued to stage stories — I'm not familiar with theater here. Is stories used interchangeably with plays? If not, perhaps that should be explained. If so, then this feels like a confusing case of WP:ELVAR.
  • Refactored. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• Some left the theatre
  • Don't entirely agree, but refactored. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• frequently toured for its performances → frequently went on tour — do theater troupes ever go on tour for reasons other than performing?
  • Not how that was intended; it was a contrast of the majority of their tours being in the same area. Either way, unnecessary and refactored. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)
• adaptations of the playwright's works → productions — again this feels like unnecessary ELVAR
  • Refactored. It's not ELVAR, but a desire to accurately reflect the sources. Spring Willow and other troupes did not perform the Bard exactly as written, but in translation (already a form of adaptation), and this generally carried with it cultural translation as well.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Kisseran (talk) 07:58, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

• • • what I felt was ELVAR was writing "the playwright's" instead of "his" or "Shakespeare's", but your revision looks good. Sorry again for being unclear. Kisseran (talk) 12:33, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

@Crisco 1492 Pinging again in case you missed this. Kisseran (talk) 06:28, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

• Hi Kisseran, and thanks for the ping. Responded above. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I see that my comments have been addressed. I shall promote this article now. Kisseran (talk) 12:33, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

@Crisco 1492 Where do you want this GA? I don't see any category under language and literature that fits. Kisseran (talk) 12:38, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

It looks like Theatre, musical theatre, dance, and opera at Wikipedia:Good_articles/Media_and_drama is the best category. I'll keep that in mind in the future: plays are in literature, but other elements of theatre are in media and drama. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 12:43, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.