伟大的凯瑟琳__Shaw, George Bernard.pdf

英文名著3000 本 Great Catherine by George Bernard Shaw In Catherines reign, whom Glory still adores --BYRON THE AUTHORS 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 Catherines diplomacy and her 1 英文名著3000 本 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 notion of the real history of their own times, or of the real forces that were moulding Europe. The French Revolution, which made such short work of Catherines Voltairean principles,surprised and scandalized her as much as it surprised and scandalized any provincial governess in the French chateaux. The main difference between her and our modern Liberal Governments was that whereas she talked and wrote quite intelligently about Liberal principles before she was frightened into making such talking and writing a flogging matter, our Liberal ministers take the name of Liberalism in vain without knowing or