The protagonist in Niccolo Machiavelli’s La Mandragola (The Mandrake) is a libidinous young man from Florence named Callimaco. Callimaco is enchanted by the beautiful wife of a foolish lawyer, Messer Nicia. Messer Nicia is desperate to father a child with his alluring wife, Lucrezia. So far Messer’s efforts to impregnate Lucrezia have failed. Callimaco learns of Messer’s desperation and disguises himself as a physician. Upon examining Lucrezia he discovers she is more appealing than his wildest dreams. He announces that a potion concocted from the root of the mandrake plant will cure Lucrezia of her affliction. However, he informs Messer the potion has one drastic side-effect. The first man who sleeps with Lucrezia will die from the potent effects of the potion. Messer determines he must find another man to sleep with his wife first, and Callimaco is only too happy to volunteer someone he knows. Of course, this volunteer will be Callimaco in disguise once more. While some critics argue The Mandrake Root is a political satire those in Machiavelli’s time, according to Bondanella and Musa (1979, 431) did not view it as such “Although some critics have attempted to reduce this marvelous comedy to a political allegory, wherein Callimaco represents Duke Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lucrezia is Florence, and Nicia stands for the ill-fated Piero Soderini, Machiavelli’s patron in the Florentine chancery, none of Machiavelli’s contemporaries viewed the play in this light.” This analysis will contend, instead, that the comedy is actually an allegory wherein Callimaco represents a successful prince, Ligurio, his minister, and, Lucrezia, fortune, which they win through avarice and human gullibility.
In examining the play we can see how this analogy is highly plausible, but it becomes more so when we look at Machiavelli’s other works like The Prince and The Discourses. In The Prince (
...