Clizia

I conceived an extraordinary love for her...!

eBook DESCRIPTION

Clizia is a comedy by Italian Renaissance political scientist and writer Niccolƒ?› Machiavelli, written in 1525. The work is based upon a classical play by Plautus. The plot centers around a lecherous Florentine named Nicomaco who becomes attracted to an orphan girl he has raised since childhood. Nicomaco's son is also interested in the girl and wishes to marry her, but both men are manipulated by the matriarch of the family.

eBook TAGS

Comedy, adultery, play, Political Science, Political Philosophy, Virtue, La Mandragola, Performance, Carnival, Political Ethics, The Woman From Andros

eBook EXCERPT or SYNOPSIS

Clizia is the last of Machiavelli's plays, and also the least regarded by audiences and critics. The Clizia is inspired by?and a few speeches are actually translated from?Casina by Plautus, a Roman comedy frequently imitated by later sixteenth-century Italian dramatists. His comic premise is that what once happened in Athens should now have occurred in Florence.
A valuable, new translation of Machiavelli's marvelous satire! Machiavelli writes in the prologue to Clizia that comedies were invented for the dual purpose of amusing and benefiting the audience. Clizia is no exception. It is a raucous comedy about love that extends to the scandalous, but it also contains a serious teaching about managing passions and relationships. Daniel Gallagher provides a lively and readable translation that enables readers to access not only the humor of the play but also makes possible thoughtful study of the play's more serious themes. His consistent and literal rendering of terms and numerous explanatory notes help readers identify Machiavellian curiosities in the language and understand the play's many allusions to religious and Renaissance doctrines. Robert Faulkner's introduction sets the stage for examining the complex work of art that is Clizia. He shows how the play mixes Machiavellian instruction with its wit and scandal, and that the malicious and scoffing humor is part of the instruction. In Clizia, as in the better known Mandragola, Machiavelli intends reform through comedy. It is a reform that mixes liberation with techniques of management, an eerily contemporary reform of private life that complements Machiavelli's famous reforms of public life.