ABSTRACT
Machiavelli’s feminist interpreters have increasingly turned to his comedy La Mandragola to problematize the vision of “masculine” virtù and self-sufficiency often attributed to his thought. Insofar as La Mandragola problematizes this vision of political action, however, this chapter argues that readers need to interrogate another character type celebrated therein: that of the detached yet unfailingly perceptive advisor whose depiction as La Mandragola’s chief strategist, Ligurio, is almost universally taken to stand in for Machiavelli himself. In investigating the place of women’s labor in Machiavelli’s oeuvre, I seek to question this analogy. To do so, I turn to re-examine the details behind La Mandragola’s authorship and performance, arguing that key sections of La Mandragola were in fact co-written by Machiavelli and Barbera Salutati, a Florentine singer and actress chiefly remembered as Machiavelli’s “love interest” in current-day scholarship, yet whose actual contribution to Machiavelli’s intellectual work goes largely unnoticed. Revisiting La Mandragola as a co-written and co-produced text raises significant political theoretic concerns. Specifically, I argue that the contextual dynamics of co-authorship challenge readers to question the rhetorical presentation of the masterful strategist—of Ligurio as Machiavelli—in their understanding of “Machiavellian” political agency.
