Post by rabagas on Jun 10, 2003 8:32:43 GMT -5
Sometime last year I discovered that there was a collection of plays performed at the Hermitage written by Catherine the Great and members of her court . The collection was in French and the book's title was Theatre de l'hermitage. I finally tracked down a copy at the Library of Congress and found it contained six plays by Catherine herself, all in French. One of the plays is an imitation of Shakespeare and deals with Rurik, the Medieval Russian hero. The rest appear to be short farces or comedies. Unfortunately getting the Library of Congress to copy these materials is prohibitively expensive. But eventually, I hope to obtain a copy for translating purposes. The collection was published as a 2 volume set in 1799 in France. It was in excellent condition. I didn't count them exactly but there were about 20 plays. I knew Catherine had written a dozen plays at least but I didn't know that she had imitated Shakespeare. I've done some research and discovered she also attempted a Shakespearean comedy based on The Merry Wives of Windsor. Not exactly what you would expect of a Russian Czarina.