that govern human life, leaves very little room for human beings to govern their own.
This paper seeks an answer to this puzzle through a reading of Machiavelli’s play La
Mandragola. The first part reads the play as a comedy, and draws out the connections between
the ‘remedy’ he offers in the play and his broader political teachings. The second part takes a
step back from this reading and attempts to read the play in a more tragic vein by calling into
question whether this ‘remedy’ actually satisfies Machiavelli’s political desires. The final
section – which could easily be a paper on its own – attempts to draw out a tragic view of politics
from Machiavelli’s writings concerning the power of fortune over human lives.
La Mandragola as Comedy
It is both obvious and necessary to read La Mandragola first as a comedy. Both its form
and content clearly place it within this genre, and it is fairly certain that Machiavelli intended his
play to be read as such. Yet, to write simply that the play belongs within the genre of comedy is
itself a gross understatement; it has been, since its original composition and production, hailed as
not only the greatest Italian comedy ever written, but even the greatest comedy ever written.
Voltaire himself wrote that he would have traded all the plays of Aristophanes for La
Mandragola, and it is most striking that, during Machiavelli’s lifetime, it was his play, and not
his political or historical works, that brought him the most fame.
3
Convention