Catherine the Great | Lurana Donnels O'Malley (essay date 1999)
Lurana Donnels O'Malley (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: O'Malley, Lurana Donnels. “From Fat Falstaff to Francophile Fop: Russian Nationalism in Catherine the Great's Merry Wives.” Comparative Drama 33, No. 3 (Fall 1999): 365-89.
[In the essay below, O'Malley demonstrates how Catherine appropriated English comedy to create plays that advanced the cause of Russian nationalism. Focusing on This 'tis to Have Linen and Buck-Baskets, Catherine's adaptation of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, O'Malley suggests that by paring down the plot and avoiding Shakespearean-style references to local events and places, Catherine created a more universal comedy that could better serve its didactic function.]
In his anonymously published General Observations Regarding the Present State of the Russian Empire (1787), Sir John Sinclair, English visitor to St. Petersburg, calls Catherine the Great “a hero in petticoats,”...
[The entire page is 10073 words long]
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