Event

Machiavelli's 'The Prince'

This fascinating world premiere play based on the infamous "handbook for tyrants" puts Niccolo Machiavelli's precepts to the test. Are human beings essentially good or fundamentally untrustworthy? Does the end always justify the means? What practical alternative is there to the ruthless efficiency of tyranny?

"He who considers it necessary to secure himself in his new principality, to win friends, to overcome either by force or fraud, to make himself beloved and feared by the people, to be followed and revered by the soldiers, to exterminate those who have power or reason to hurt him, to change the old order of things for new, to be severe and gracious, magnanimous and liberal, to destroy a disloyal soldiery and to create a new one, to maintain friendship with kings and princes in such a way that they must help him with zeal and offend with caution, cannot find a more lively example than the actions of Duke Cesare Borgia."--Machiavelli, 'The Prince', Chapter VII.