ABSTRACT
The likelihood that Shakespeare had read The Prince directly is not only very slim, it could even be ruled out completely for several reasons: he could not speak Italian; in the case of Measure for Measure he had drawn from Whetstone, who used Giraldi, who used Seneca; and no "English" editions of Machiavelli's book existed until 1640. Angelo's appointment to replace the Duke is a Machiavellian strategy: delegating the difficult choices to others to avoid unpopularity. Indeed, as Machiavelli advised, 'princes must delegate distasteful tasks to others, while pleasant ones they should keep for themselves'. So, about Shakespeare, it can be said that among his characters there are some who resemble Machiavelli's sovereign according to the reconstruction by Gentillet, which latched onto the earlier and already flourishing base of the anti-absolutist polemic with its diffidence towards power, mediated by the Elizabethan playwrights.
