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,” who

knows the French Belles Lettres perfectly, and, anno 1786, was reading Shakespeare in the German translation. She also writes comedies herself; and in any part of the...