Word: niccol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...current historical-novel bug has bitten even Somerset Maugham. With Then and Now he leaves the 19th and 20th Centuries for the first time since his Making of a Saint (1898), retreats 400-odd years to the Italy of Cesare Borgia and Niccoló Machiavelli. Then and Now is a talky, occasionally witty costume piece about Machiavelli in love and Borgia in his glory. It is also an ironical sermon on the unchanging wonders of human nature. Novelist Maugham, now 72, denies that he preaches sermons of any kind. Said he recently: "I think it is an abuse...
...mission, he realizes that he has had an education in statecraft and princely behavior, also in the behavior of women. He drafts a saucy play about a woman like Aurelia, hints that he may some day write a book about a man like Borgia. "My dear Niccoló," says a friend, "you're so impractical. Who d'you think would read it? You're not going to achieve immortality by writing a book like that." The play, Mandragola, was finished about 1514. The Prince came out some nine years later...