Should a Ruler who wishes to maintain power be good and virtuous?

With Machiavelli, we are back in the era of our Castiglione reading last week. Machiavelli’s dates are

1469-1527, Castiglione’s, 1478-1529.

Our readings for Machiavelli consist of an extract from his most famous work, The Prince (or, to give

it the author’s own title, On Principalities), and the entirety of his comedy, The Mandrake Root. I

chose the comedy as our main focus in this course as it is the work of Machiavelli’s that most closely

engages with the city (via the analogy between city and household that we have previously

encountered in Aristotle and Boccaccio).

Critics have long been fascinated by the connections between The Mandrake Root and The Prince,

both of which are noticeable for their moral and political “realism” (in the sense of a focus on

objective study of “what is”—how people and politicians actually behave—rather than on “what

should be.”) Plato and his depiction of the guardians in The Republic would be a good example of the

opposite, moral idealism. I have chosen the chapters from The Prince that provide the crispest

statement of Machiavelli’s moral position: those that deal with the moral qualities thinkers

conventionally require in rulers, contrasted with those that Machiavelli feels are actually most

effective and successful.

I would advise that you read the extract from The Prince first, thinking about the relationship

between Machiavelli’s moral teachings and those of previous authors we have looked at on this

course. You can then keep The Prince in mind as a moral template when you turn to The Mandrake

Root and consider the way in which Machiavelli represents the morals of private Florentine citizens

in the play.

Another text from our course with which The Mandrake Root enters into dialogue is Boccaccio’s

Decameron. It may be illuminating to think back to stories like those of Andreuccio da Perugia (II, 5)

and Masetto da Lamporecchio (III, 1) as you are reading the play.