The master figure of Elizabethan drama is Machiavelli. He was only known through the French of Gentillet, if that: but he was the great character of supreme intrigue that, however taken, was at the back of every tudor mind. Elizabethan drama--"the first terror-stricken meeting of the England of Elizabeth with the Italy of the late renaissance"--was more terrified of Machiavelli than of anybody. The Borgias, Sforzas, Baglionis, Malatestas, Riartes were of far more …showed first 75 words of 2137 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2137 total…of murdering ten of your most malicious friends, or six who fatigue you most with their stupidity, drowning them all in one bath, plunging them all into one well or pit, cementing them all up into one wall; all the contriving and bustling, the breathless, coloured life, the fierce danger, the satisfaction in deceiving as Alexander VI. was able to do, and so on: that is the object of this at first sight strange life....