"Modernity for Fools and Knaves: Machiavelli's Mandragola and Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well"

(This lecture is part of the Carol J. Worrell Annual Series on Literature.)

DEAN'S LECTURE SERIES: In chapter 15 of The Prince Machiavelli famously recommends "going to the effectual truth of the thing rather than to the imagination of it." If political writers wish to be effective, then they must act on the truth that all the world is comprised of fools and knaves. This fact turns out to be great good fortune because the fools and knaves can be tricked into Machiavellian orders. The premise of the lecture is that we moderns have been twice tricked into the contemporary order of things. Machiavell's comedy, Mandragola, displays the first trick. It portrays a young man who forms a conspiracy to convince a (beautiful) married woman to sleep with him. The conspiracy includes her husband, mother and confessor. The Machiavellian conspiracy is an enterprise to subdue the Christian conscience. It is wildly successful, and the comedy ends as the conspira- tors happily march to church together. The second trickster is Francis Bacon. He does not open- ly expose his trick, but Shakespeare does in the comedy (3) All's Well That Ends Well. It presents a clever woman who conspires to trick a willful man into consummating unwillingly their mar- riage. He is tricked into destroying the virtue of filial piety. The marriage is consummated, but
All's Well does not end as well as the Mandragola. Who are the fools?

Image: A detail of William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (color litho), by Artus Scheiner (1863-1938)