Theater and its Social Uses: MachiavellisMandragolaand the Spectacle of Infamy^*

Abstract

Long seen as a play that celebrates the new-found freedom of its female protagonist, Mandragola may in fact question the very possibility of theatrical "liberation. "Drawing on the foundational myth central to Renaissance thinking about theater, the abduction of the Sabine women, this essay shows how Machiavelli endeavored to make his play a discomfitting experience for characters and audience alike. This conception of comedy as social trap both challenged humanistic notions of the ideal relationship between theater and the city, and accentuated the surveillant norms inherent in humanists'understanding of the role of the stage in society.

Curing Virtue: Epicureanism and Erotic Fantasy in Machiavelli’s Mandragola

“… 12. Tylus (2000) reviews the parallels between Ovid’s description of the rape of the Sabine women in Ars and Machiavelli’s Mandragola . …”

Mapping rule and subversion: Perspective and the democratic turn in Machiavelli scholarship

“…15 Including those things forced out of sight, insofar as La Mandragola ’s leveling of perspective likewise foregrounds the need to remain alert to characters’ capacities for ‘withholding … information from the public space’. For an approach attentive to the dangers of reducing the play's action merely to comedic ‘liberation’ absent its thematisation of how information is disseminated, see Tylus (2000).…”