Machiavelli by Quentin Skinner

Author:Quentin Skinner
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780192574558
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2019-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

The theorist of liberty

The republican turn

With the completion of The Prince, Machiavelli’s hopes of returning to an active public career revived. As he wrote to Francesco Vettori in December 1513, his highest aspiration was to make himself ‘useful to our Medici lords, even if they begin by making me roll a stone’ (C 305). He wondered if the most effective means of realizing his ambition might be to go to Rome with ‘this little treatise of mine’ in order to offer it in person to Giuliano de’ Medici, thereby showing him that he ‘might well be pleased to gain my services’ (C 305). Vettori at first seemed willing to support this scheme. He replied that Machiavelli should send him the book, so that he ‘could see whether it might be appropriate to present it’ (C 312). When Machiavelli duly dispatched the fair copy he had begun to make of the opening chapters, Vettori announced that he was ‘extremely pleased with them’, though he cautiously added that ‘since I do not have the rest of the work, I do not wish to offer a final judgement’ (C 319).

It soon became clear, however, that Machiavelli’s hopes were again going to be dashed. Having read the whole of The Prince early in 1514, Vettori responded with an ominous silence. He never mentioned the work again, and instead began to fill up his letters with distracting chatter about his latest love affairs. Although Machiavelli forced himself to write back in a similar spirit, he was barely able to conceal his mounting anxiety. By the middle of the year he had finally come to realize that his plans were hopeless, and he wrote in great bitterness to Vettori to say that he was giving up the struggle. It has become obvious, he says, ‘that I am going to have to continue in this sordid way of life, without finding a single man who remembers the service I have done or believes me capable of doing any good’ (C 343).

After this disappointment Machiavelli’s life underwent a permanent change. Abandoning any further hope of a diplomatic career, he began to see himself increasingly as a man of letters. The main sign of this new orientation was that, after another year or more of ‘rotting in idleness’ in the country, he started to take a prominent part in the meetings held by a group of humanists and literati who gathered at Cosimo Rucellai’s gardens on the outskirts of Florence for learned conversation and entertainment.

These discussions at the Orti Oricellari were partly of a literary character. There were debates about the rival merits of Latin and Italian as literary languages, and there were readings and even performances of plays. The effect on Machiavelli was to channel his creative energies in a new direction, and he decided to write a play himself. The result was Mandragola, his brilliant if brutal comedy about the seduction of an old judge’s beautiful young wife. The original version was probably completed in 1518,

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