The Mandrake

the Mandrake ( Mandragola in Italian) was written by Nicolas Machiavel in 1518. This part is short a joke Burlesque in 5 acts, a kind which precedes the Théâtre popular Italian of the “Commedia dell' arte” (16th century).

Historical context

the Mandrake is written like revenge against the Médicis. With the fall of the republic, Machiavel, after being shown of plot against the Médicis and being driven out Florence, written to the Prince ( It Principle ) where he allows himself to give councils to the Head of the State on the best mode to control. He hopes for this manner that Lorenzo de Médicis will enable him to return to Florence. However, Lorenzo will never yield. the Mandrake is thus dedicated to him, but it is especially a satirical judgment of the company florentine of the time. It is a caricature, a social polemic. the Mandrake is a blow of gun in the company. At that time, the policy is difficult thus the cultural life is too. For this reason the comedy has a very particular originality. She dissociates herself from all that one knew up to that point.

The basic idea is original as well as the characters, especially the young woman, Lucrezia. She appears very little in the part but it is a positive character, through whom Machiavel makes pass his ideology. Under the cover of comic, Machiavel can express its own ideas in a very subtle way: actually, Lucrezia is neither more nor less than the reversed mirror of the Prince . It is about a setting in abyme.

Even the language seems to be created for this comedy and, through it, Machiavel illustrates its taste for the rotten trick ( the beffa in Italian).

This comedy is described as “unicum”: it is single, inimitable. Machiavel itself will never reproduce a work as good as this one.

The action

The action occurs to Florence, in Toscane. The hero is an young man, Callimaco Gaudagni, which has just spent twenty years in France, with Paris. A commercial friend informed it of the existence with Florence of a woman of a great beauty, Lucrezia, young person marries of the rich person Nicia Calfucci. Returned in its birthplace, it has nothing any more but one objective at the head: to allure beautiful Lucrezia.

The intrigue

Callimaco intends to misuse the great naivety of Nicia, credulous middle-class man, whose married couple for 6 years has still not had a child and starts to despair to have some. To conclude its company of seduction, it calls upon Ligurio, a freeloader crafty one, déluré and malignant. First report: Lucrezia is an austere woman, who is held with the shelter of the pleasures of the company, and which never leaves its house safe to go to the church and to confess itself. The two accomplices initially try to convince Nicia to take along his wife in a thermal city, with the water recognized for its bénéfiquessur effects fruitfulness. They suppose that Lucrezia will become an easier prey out of its house and of its city but the idea does not allure absolutely Lucrezia.

The stratagem

Undertaking Ligurio then imagines to make pass Callimaco for an eminent doctor, specialist in the fertility, coldly returned from Paris. Ligurio implies in Nicia which the “doctor” Guadagni knows an infallible potion for the pregnancy, a potion of mandrake, a preparation that even the Queen of France would have tested successfully. Only annoying side effect, the first man who approaches the woman who drank the potion, dies in the 8 days which follow. The stratgème is set up, but Lucrezia is not convinced by the fact of putting itself at the bed with the first come vagrant, employed like expiatory victim of the potion. One will need all the conviction of an impatient mother to become grandmother, and especially of the Church, via easily corrupted Timoteo brother… Reassured by the fact that the will of God could not be questioned, and that the Church, like his/her mother, brings her blessing to the cuckoldry as to the murder, Lucrezia is let little by little persuade…

Prolog

See too

the plant Mandrake

Random links: