Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

When Did Machiavelli Write Mandragola *

1971; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2859587

1935-0236

Sergio Bertelli,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

The dating of La Mandragola is one of the most difficult problems in Machiavelli scholarship. Roberto Ridolfi, first in his biography of Machiavelli (1954) and more recently in an essay in La Bibliofilia (1962), proposed a new and apparently definitive solution; the comedy must have been written between January and February 1518, for the marriage of Lorenzo de’ Medici the younger, in the short space of one month, and performed soon after, on February 16, 1518. In fact, we have very few and very late records about the performance of La Mandragola and the text of the comedy has come down to us only through an anonymous edition and one manuscript.