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GREAT CATHERINE (WHOM GLORY STILL ADORES)

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW




"In Catherine's reign, whom Glory still adores"
BYRON


THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY FOR GREAT CATHERINE

Exception has been taken to the title of this seeming tomfoolery
on the ground that the Catherine it represents is not Great
Catherine, but the Catherine whose gallantries provide some of
the lightest pages of modern history. Great Catherine, it is
said, was the Catherine whose diplomacy, whose campaigns and
conquests, whose plans of Liberal reform, whose correspondence
with Grimm and Voltaire enabled her to cut such a magnificent
figure in the eighteenth century. In reply, I can only confess
that Catherine's diplomacy and her conquests do not interest me.
It is clear to me that neither she nor the statesmen with whom
she played this mischievous kind of political chess had any