SOURCE: Faulkner, Robert. “Clizia and the Enlightenment of Private Life.” In The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works, edited by Vickie B. Sullivan, pp. 30–56. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Faulkner discusses Machiavelli's humor and underlying message in La clizia.

The Clizia is a comedy about love that borders on the scandalous. As a matter of fact, it crosses the border. But the play is not the ordinary romantic farce or, what is just now more conventional, the ordinary dramatic scandal. One should not expect the ordinary from a playwright so extraordinary. Machiavellian may be a common byword now, but Machiavelli was a political scientist or political philosopher. The Prince, his most famous work, is perhaps the most notorious handbook for unscrupulous policies ever and perhaps also the most influential treatise of political philosophy ever.

I shall argue that Machiavelli's Clizia...