PREVIEW： Chronicles #30 ｜ The Mandrake with Stelios Panagiotou
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Summary
Niccolo Machiavelli was a man of many talents, but perhaps none more important than his ability to write a play, The Mandrake, written in the 1500s. In this episode of Chronicles, we discuss the play, its origins, and the motivations behind writing it.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to this episode of Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about
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The Mandrake by Niccolo Machiavelli. Yes, that Machiavelli. He also, it turns out,
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wrote plays, comedies, in fact. And here today, joining me to talk all about the comedy of Machiavelli
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is Stelios. Thank you for joining me, sir. You're welcome. I'm really looking forward to it. I have
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to say that I hadn't read the play, and you suggested us to do it, and I said yes. Yes,
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you did. And I really enjoyed it. It's great, isn't it? Well, I find that it's a facet of
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Machiavelli that is really underappreciated. Obviously, you know, not saying that the stuff
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that he's most well known for, the discourses and the prints and the art of war, that these things
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aren't remarkable, you know, in their own right. But the fact that he also was able to write,
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and also the thing to bear in mind, not just that he was able to write theatre, but theatre
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that was successful. This sold really well. Lots and lots of people went to go and see
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The Mandrake. It was performed for, got many, many years of performance out of it, even after
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Machiavelli died. It was a very, very popular play. And, you know, it was quite a wit, that
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Machiavelli. He was always cracking jokes. And that's a sign of intelligence. If you can make
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it in two different, if you can make it in some cases, it's a sign that, you know, something's
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going right, something's going well. But if you can make it in several genres, that's a
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sign of intelligence. Right. And what's more as well, Machiavelli, at the time of this play,
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had many personal reasons for doing all of the writing that he did. Because so historians and,
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you know, people who still do this sort of thing professionally, generally concur that the play
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was written any time between 1504 and 1518. Now, I actually think we can narrow that down a little
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bit more. Because there are certain parts of the play that are very, very similar to a play called
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The Calandria, which was published in 1513. And it seems far more likely that Machiavelli saw this,
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performed at Urbino, and was perhaps inspired by it, than it was that the guy who wrote Calandria
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just got to check in on what Machiavelli was working on. Right. So actually, that would make
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sense. And what's more as well, we'll talk about when I read an extract, it seems that
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Machiavelli wrote this play as a bit of a distraction for himself as well from the misfortune
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that he was currently going through after the fall of the Florentine Republic under Pierre
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Sodorini and the Medicis coming back into power, the head of the Spanish army, and obviously that
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cratering Machiavelli's political career. And so he was right. Most of his writing came from that
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period, of course, and the Mandrake seems to have been one of those such pieces.
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I mean, you can get why he would want to do that. First of all, I think he was a kind of man of
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affairs, but also a man of letters. So he was involved in diplomacy, unless I'm horribly
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He was involved in the Florentine Republic, as you said. And people know, link Machiavelli with the
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Prince. And the Prince is a sort of different, it isn't particularly Republican, a particularly
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Republican text. But then he also has discourses on Livy, which is very Republican in several
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respects. And there are several people who are saying that most probably Machiavelli was
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a Republican at heart. He did have this realist perspective and this cold scientific approach
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with respect to, you know, give me the time and a place and I'll tell you what you need to do.
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Maybe you have a principality, maybe you have a republic. But it looks like discourses of Livy
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is where his heart was, where his sentiments were. And he was involved in the Florentine Republic.
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And then he had a tough time with the Medici's, I think. I think at some point he was tortured.
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Yes. And he was, I think he definitely had this burning desire to get involved into politics.
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He was a participatory spirit. And even when the Republic fell, after a period he did want
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to come back and say, right, it may not be my ideal thing, form of political organization,
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but I do want to be present and give advice to the Medici's. But what is interesting, and I've always
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found interesting with Machiavelli, and I won't bore you with this, is that the prince is always
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supposed to be this handbook for how to gain power and maintain it. But the people he gives there as
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So you kind of have to wonder whether he was actually sincere in the advice he was giving,
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or whether he was actually saying, right, I'm going to give terrible advice to people,
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Well, I do think that, obviously, as well, Machiavelli seems to have had his own personal
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ambitions, right, his own personal sense of direction that he wanted to see not just Florence,
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but the whole of Italy move into. And obviously, a lot of that was drawn up in the volatility
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of Italy, you know, at the end of the 15th century, at the beginning of the 16th century,
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with the Habsburgs preying down on them, and the French armies, you know, and all sorts
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of betrayals that were going on. And obviously, Machiavelli is looking at that, he's looking
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back towards antiquity, and the greatness of what he saw as a Roman Republic.
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And obviously, I think that's where his Republican sympathies come from. And also just looking
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at wanting a united Italy, but also just to do away with unworthy rulers, right? He's tired
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of watching all of these great cities being let down by mediocrities.
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That's a very interesting discussion here, because where exactly Republicanism features
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in the history of ideas, especially post-Reformation, is a huge question. And if you look at the
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language he uses when he talks about antiquity, it's very personal. So for instance, in the
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very beginning of Discourses on Livy, he says, I think I can't wait to go back to my house
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and just spend a few hours at night reading about antiquity. And he was saying that reading
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about antiquity isn't just reading about something that will in any way will come back. It's reading
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about something that you can actually exercise in the world of today.
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But when it comes to the world of the post-Reformation, and the Reformation started a bit later.
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He was alive, but it's a bit later. It's a bit, you know, 1520 or something. 1517 was
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Yes. But Machiavelli is insanely skeptical of wealth. It's understandable because in his own
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mind, it was the Medici's who were, in a sense, part of the downfall of the Florentine Republic
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and also part of corruption. And I think in the Mandrake, we do see this skepticism of wealth.
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And what I'm saying so is that people go back to Machiavelli speaking pro-Republicanism,
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but Machiavelli is also someone who is very much anti-wealth in some respects. He doesn't want
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massive, you know, discrepancies of wealth or something. He does have, in a sense, some of
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the old, you know, old Cato sentiment that wealth is what destroyed the Republic ultimately.
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Yeah. What you were saying as well about Machiavelli wanting to sort of rehabilitate
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the old Roman virtues as well, and the Roman practice of doing things, that is very much
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reflected formally in the Mandrake as a play, because it adheres to the classical style of
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writing. You know, it appeals to the Aristotelian unities of time, place and action. All of it happens
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within 24 hours. All of it happens within basically the same location. You don't need to have lots of
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changeovers and sets. And so all those things that I was actually talking about in the last Chronicles,
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the way that Lopez Vega, the Spaniard, deconstructed those things and moved away from them. You can see
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here Machiavelli adhering to that old classical form quite rigidly because of his love for it and all of
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these sorts of things. So let's start talking about the play itself, shall we? Did you enjoy it?
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Yes, I did. It was very funny. And I laughed and I very rarely laugh when I'm reading.
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Yeah, I get that. Some people are a bit more... It comes easier to them, more naturally. But when
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I'm reading, I usually don't laugh. And I did laugh in several places.
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Right. Well, yeah, that's one thing to say. It is genuinely very funny. Everything is funny about it.
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The premise of the play is funny. The characters themselves are funny. Machiavelli has... It's a five-act play,
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but actually having said it's five-act, I'm not talking like Hamlet. It's actually quite a short play.
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The different scenes are very, very brief. It kind of skips along and you can read it all in about two
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hours. So let's start talking about what happens in Machiavelli's Mandrake. So you have this young man,
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Calamaco, who is probably about 30. You know, he's in his early 30s. And he's lived... He is Italian by
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birth. But he has lived for a many number of years over in Paris. And so he's been gone for a long time.
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And actually, he was very, very happy in Paris. He was living off of some inherited wealth, but he was...
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He was med-maxing. You know, he was just sort of like kicking his feet a bit. You know, he was doing a bit of study here,
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a bit of work there. But, you know, he wasn't really... I think the point is that he wasn't pursuing
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really anything in life single-mindedly. He wasn't really intensely trying to create a career or trying to really do anything.
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The thing that makes Calamaco lock in is that he hears from a local Italian that this woman,
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this noble woman, Lucrezia, is apparently the most beautiful woman to have ever lived. You know,
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she is the modern Helen of Troy. You know, their contemporary Helen. And so Calamaco basically just
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drops everything, decides to return to Florence so that he can see this woman for himself. And then on
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seeing that, yeah, she's an absolute 10 out of 10, he begins to devise this entire plan to basically
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figure out a way to sleep with her. That is a part of the play. He has noble motives.
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Well, you know, he has understandable motives. He has understandable motives. The catch is,
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of course, that this noble lady, Lucrezia, is not single. She's married to Mr. Nysia,
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I think that's how you pronounce it, who is a lawyer, is an educated man, and he's a total oath,
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right? He's genuinely one of the dimmest men you've ever seen, right? He's dry, he's humorless,
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he's entirely without charisma. He's basically, I think the point that Machiavelli is trying to make
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is that she is wasted on him, right? She is wasted on him. He goes full stupid. Yeah. Yeah, he goes full,
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full retard. And so in order to help him with all of this, Calamaco has his actual servant,
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Ciro, who I think is quite a nice character. You know, Machiavelli gets a lot of humor out of him,
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to say he's one of the more minor characters. And also, most importantly, Ligurio, who is
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kind of a fixer. You know, he's someone who is willing to... He's facilitating.
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Yes. Yeah, he's a facilitator. He's a facilitator, yeah. Yeah, he's pimping for Calamaco. And the three
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of them are going to work together to basically trick Nysia into allowing Calamaco to sleep with his
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wife. Yeah. That's the entire premise of the play. Now, one thing to say about all of this is that
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though the play works as a very, very raucous and, you know, immoral, let's just say it,
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immoral comedy, there is, I think the way that Machiavelli portrays it, an added allegorical layer
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to it. And this is, I'm not the first person to have this opinion. It's one that is debated,
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but you know, that has definitely been posited. I mean, interestingly enough, if I just go to
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my quotes section here, Peter Bondinello, who translated this particular copy that I have,
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he, talking about this particular thing, said, although some critics have attempted to reduce
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this marvellous comedy to the status of a political allegory, none of Machiavelli's contemporaries,
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i.e. those best qualified to notice any allegorical content, viewed the play in this light. They all
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considered it as an exemplary neoclassical comedy, intended solely to delight without containing a
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political message. So they saw it as just pure apolitical comedy, you know, hearkening back to
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those great ancient days of Terence and Plautus and all those sorts of plays. But did you read political
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overlay to it? I saw more social layers to it than political, because he definitely talks about
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corruption and hints at corrupt institutions and corrupt people, but it doesn't give any kind
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of answer to questions such as, you know, what's the best form of organizations or political
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organization to have. So on that basis, I found it to be a much more social thing. He did say that,
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for instance, some priests are corrupt. Yeah, he definitely did. Or that some family members
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go about loving their children in a weird way. But I didn't see any overt political messages.
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Yeah. But all of the characters in this play...
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You could say there could be an implicit one in that, for instance, he could say, well,
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we were virtuous before. And for him, virtue means something different to the classical national
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virtue. It doesn't have the justice part of the four cardinal virtues, but it does have identification
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with the republic and placing the common good of the republic above your own good as a personal,
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as an individual. He could be saying that, well, now that we're not a republic anymore,
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everyone's corrupt, even the priest. I don't know if he was that naive, because I don't think that in
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the Florentine Republic, there wasn't such a thing as corruption or something. No, no, definitely not.
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Very unlikely. But it's not something that it's beyond... It's not particularly weird if he made that argument.
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Hmm. And well, one thing to actually say about that as well, and whether or not it's critiquing
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the Florentine Republic or the Medici oligarchy, is that the play itself is actually set in 1504.
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So it's set during the time of the republic, though, of course, there are obvious reasons
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Machiavelli might be doing that just to distance himself from any critiques that he may have of the
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Medici's. And all of the characters within this play are all motivated entirely by self-interest,
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entirely by self-interest. And not only are they all motivated by self-interest, there is not really
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any reflection from those characters or pause for thought on whether or not they should pivot or change
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course against what they're doing. Kalimako, outside of concern for the consequences of what
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should happen to him if it were to go wrong, never really has any moral question about what he's doing.
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As far as he's concerned, this is a beautiful woman. She's wasted on him. I am,
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you know, I am the prince, right? Kalimako kind of embodies a lot of the qualities that Machiavelli
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speaks about in the prince. In that way, I think the Mandrake is kind of a dark comedy companion piece
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to the prince in some ways. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters,