A Gift in One Hand, a Knife in the Other

In Social Science this past week you’ve read all of Machiavelli’s Prince. For class today I want to focus on passages that strike you as significant for thinking about Shakespeare’s portrait of court life in Hamlet. Go back through your Soc Sci reading, and then transcribe a short but significant passage from Machiavelli into the comment box below. Then reply to that comment with a 2-¶ writeup. Use the first ¶ to discuss what Machiavelli is arguing in that passage, perhaps clarifying its meaning by reference to the issues and concerns in the larger context of the book. Use the second ¶ to discuss how this passage is relevant for Hamlet.

People not enrolled in Social Science have my permission to do this assignment focusing on JUST the passages I’ve excerpted from Machiavelli on the Unit 4 Assignment Page—look down in the comments. But before doing the assignment, see if you can get someone who IS in Corrin Social Science to give you a brief run-down on what Machiavelli is up to in The Prince.

Finally, as an aid for anyone who doesn’t have the Social Science reader, I’ve scanned a large portion of The Prince and uploaded it to the CourseDocs site.