Machiavelli’s The Prince as a Modern Political Guidebook Essay

The Prince as a Modern semipolitical Guidebook Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. (Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV 111.1.31) Kingship and drawship is a human concept. Contraptions and fiction invented by human beings that study the fabric of society together. It is the job of the leader to make the fiction deed for the good of all. The quote to a higher place evokes the overall feeling about kingship held by both Prince Hal and his father in Shakespeares Henry plays. Being a leader is perhaps the roughly difficult position one can ever attain. And in the same vein that King Henry IV says this above line, so does his son King Henry V offer this requiem The slave, a member of the countrys peace, Enjoys it but in gross brain miniature wots What watch the King keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages. (Henry V IV.i 280-4) Shakespeare was sagaciously aware that there was little difference between a accredited king and a player-king. He gives us Henry V, a prince who knows how to be both. We see him as a politician dealing with ambassadors and a diplomatist dealing with his advisors. He dispenses justice and mercy. He must know when to range traitors and thieves and when to free drunks who insult him in the streets. He is a warrior and an oratorical wizard. He inspires courage in the face of desperate circumstances and perhaps most importantly he knows how to seem one thing while he is another. All these qualities make Hal Shakespeares quintessential prince and these are the qualities that Niccolo Machiavelli saw as necessities for some(prenominal) good leader of a people. The Prince, written in Florence in the class 1513, by Machiavelli, is one of t... ...cause he didnt teach anything that wasnt already known to mightily leaders. In fact, in his address to Lorenzo de Medici, as I noted earlier, he states that the conclusions he makes are drawn from his knowledge of history. Throughout the book he makes references to historical situations and events that employ the very means to political success he describes. What is great about The Prince is not its original content but that it mirrors the regime of his time as well as our time. The book is a fruit of the Italian Renaissance in that it attempts to explain how things really are quite than how they are perceived. WORKS CITED Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Trans. Christian E. Detmold. new-fangled York Airmont, 1965. Strauss, Leo. Machiavelli the Immoralist. The Prince A Norton Critical Edition. New York W.W. Norton, 1977. 180-185.