ABSTRACT
Among the many attractive features of Nicholas Boyle's Goethe biography is its combination of good sense and worldly wisdom. In Goethe's day, as in pragmatism was also a political issue, and the extreme exponent of pragmatism was taken to be Machiavelli. Machiavelli's reception has been complex. He was often caricatured as the demonic embodiment of amoral power politics who appears, for example, in the prologue to Marlowe's Jew of Malta. Machiavelli's reception has been complex. Goethe rarely mentions Machiavelli, with one striking exception. The name 'Machiavell' occurs prominently as that of a character in Egmont who is confidential secretary to Margaret of Parma, the Regent of the Netherlands before Alba's arrival. Such a person is recorded in Goethe's source. The Machiavellian Oranien, like other courtiers in Goethe's plays, notably Weislingen, represents the new world of essentially amoral political manipulation. He tends towards the Machiavellianism that moralists conventionally denounced.
