Word: machiavellis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first sign of what modern minds have wrought comes in the opening moments. In a short prologue, Machiavelli (played by Schmidt) introduces Gitter as Barabas, the wily Jew. An appearance by the "odious" Italian was usually enough to terrify Elizabethans for the evening. But let Schmidt merely change one word in the script, let him say "I come not to read a lecture here in Cambridge," and Presto! The audence laughs and the fun begins...
...highlighting the plays ribaldry and underplaying Barabas' vengeful character, Schmidt chose the proper touch, for The Jew of Malta was quite distinctly written for an Elizabethan audience. When Marlowe so immediately linked Barabas with Machiavelli, he captured both the notoriety of The Prince and the legend of the Jew in England. Barabas was a complete steretoype, done with all of Marlowe's unbelievable extravagance. Sacrificing even his daughter to his lust for money and revenge, Barabas embodied such a total immorality that the Elizabethans could only have flinched in fear of his craft...
...Machiavelli and the typical Jewish usurer convey little to a modern audience, however, and the play needs a touch of the ham to be saved from mediocrity. The actors play slapstick so well that the production's one weak moment is an off-spring of their own success. In the last act, Barabas gets caught in his own plot and sinks to a painful death in a "deep pit past recovery." His wile has betrayed him, and his snarling vengeance ("Damn'd Christians, dogs, and Turkish Infidels,") echoes across the stage. Having avoided the serious side of Barabas' treachery until...
Macleod's revelation revived once again the controversy over the Tories' strange "evolutionary" method of choosing a Prime Minister, suggested that the technique owed more to Machiavelli than to Darwin. It also showed fissures in a party which traditionally has gained much of its public strength by presenting a sound, "nonfissiparous" image. Though Macleod's caustic chronicle came in reply to a fulsomely pro-Macmillan book by Journalist Randolph Churchill, and thus allowed Macleod to appear only to be setting the record straight, many Britons sensed the beginnings of a new leadership battle. If the Conservatives lose...
Thus would a prince who believed Machiavelli suppress The Prince. If Communism, as Marx said in 1848, is "a specter haunting Europe," then Nechaev, one of the devil's saints, is a specter haunting Communism...