26-12-1525
Guicciardini gives instructions to M. concerning the performance of Mandragola in Faenza and emphasizes the importance of comedy during times of hardship.
Francesco Guicciardini to Niccolò Machiavelli
Discover the different practices and forms of Machiavellian otium across a selection of letters taken from Niccolò Machiavelli’s correspondence between 1512 and 1527.
Guicciardini gives instructions to M. concerning the performance of Mandragola in Faenza and emphasizes the importance of comedy during times of hardship.
M. explains idiomatic and proverbial expressions from his Mandragola, which were unclear to Guicciardini. He provides a report on the state of the preparations in Florence as to the performance of this comedy in Faenza.
Description of a day in M.’s life in his villa in Sant’Andrea in Percussina (San Casciano). This letter is M.’s most famous letter because in it he informs Francesco Vettori that he is writing “un opuscolo de principatibus” later identified as The Prince. He asks Vettori to convey his “opuscule” to the Medici.
