Machiavel


         Machiavel is a popular type of character in Elizabethan drama, stimulated alone by the desire to perform evil; a type of villain. The Machiavel derives his title from Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Italian scholar and author of The Prince (1513).This work illustrates the qualifications necessary for a ruler of the typical Italian city-state, and the emergent portrait is one of a heartless , campaign dictator. For Machiavelli's prince, the end justifies the means. The work was well known in England , and the concept of scheming, heartless cheater passed quickly into dramatic tradition. So popular was the type of the villainous Machiavel that he emerged as the protagonist in several Elizabethan tragedies. We find the best examples of the Machiavel type in Barabas in Christopher Marlowe's (1564-1593) The Jew of Malta,(1589-1590), Edmund in Shakespeare;s King Lear,(1605-1606), Richard Ш in Richard Ð¨ ( 1592-1593), and perhaps the most famous of all, Iago in Othello (1604-1605). The Machiavel is discussed extensively in C.V. Boyer's The Villain as Hero in Elizabethan Tragedy (1964).
Marlowe and Shakespeare certainly portrayed Maciavelli in an unfavourable light.

Characteristic of Machiavel


  • Machiavel's devotion to evil for his own sake without any motivation required. This happens  just because of his sinful nature.
  • The total lack of awareness by other characters of his propensity for evil.
  • His delight in his own evil, expressed in humorous soliloquies.
  • His application of a victim or gull to assist him.
  • His treachery against those who have aided him. he is disloyal against his companions.
  • Machiavel is lusty and lechery by nature. 
  • His disrespect for religion and conventional morality. His wicked nature deprive him from all those goodness.