THE term “intertextuality” is complex for a variety of reasons, but the most eloquent definition I know of is the simplest: intertextuality is a conversation among texts. Set aside all the taxonomic questions about what precisely the terms, “appropriation,” “adaptation,” or “allusion” mean or do. Ignore the theoretical complexities about who or what makes meaning in related texts. If one simply accepts the metaphor as a metaphor, texts do seem to have conversations. In this article, I want to trace one of those conversations.

Machiavelli and Livy

Let us begin with one of the bogeymen of early modern England: Niccolò Machiavelli. Exiled from Florence by the Medici, Machiavelli spent his time writing. Most notably he wrote political works, but he also turned out an impertinent play called Mandragola, published in 1518 and produced in 1526.

As Christopher Colenza remarks, “The play is by turns funny, scabrous, and by our standards completely—but typically for Machiavelli's era—politically incorrect” (134). In it, a foolish husband, Nicia, assents to his wife, Lucrezia, sleeping with a handsome student, Callimaco. The couple has no children, but a mountebank convinces Nicia that once Lucrezia takes a fertility potion made from mandrake root, she will become fertile. The first man to sleep with her after she takes the potion will die, but then Nicia can impregnate her. Credulous Nicia conveniently meets a student, Callimaco, and fails to recognize that Callimaco was the mysterious mountebank. Nicia's friends—a servant, a parasite, a priest— encourage him to arrange the adulterous liaison. While Lucrezia is initially reluctant to commit adultery, all urge her on, including her husband, her mother, and her priest. She agrees, and all live happily ever after.

In the opening scenes of the play, Machiavelli carefully prepares the plot. Callimaco has been away from Florence for two decades, but explains, ”… one day a group of us expatriates were talking, and we started to argue about whether French girls were really more appealing than the girls in Italy, … and then Calfucci suddenly exclaimed that if all other Italian women should be hideous beasts, there was a relative of his [Madonna Lucrezia] who could win the prize for Italy entirely on her own” (14). Overwhelmed by desire for the beautiful Lucrezia, Callimaco hastens to Florence, where he learns that the stupid Nicia and his wife yearn for a child.