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Excerpt from Litterarhistorische Forschungen, Vol. 1: Herausgegeben
One word by way of preface is necessary for the understanding of this dissertation. Four years ago when first making the acquaintance of Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Jonson Chapman Marston, Dekker, Middleton, Webster, Massinger, Ford, and other of Shakspere' s great contemporaries, I was struck by the number of times Machiavelli and Aretino were referred to, and the reckless manner in which what I then supposed to be the farmer's political principles, were cited and put into practice by the villains of dramatic literature. Having determined to investigate to what extent this had been done, a careful study was first made of Machiavelli. Then the drama was reread. To my surprise I found that what the Elizabethans reverted to so often as the maxims of the Florentine statesman, were, in four cases out of five, not to be found in his writings at all; but were perverted from the same in a manner infinitely unjust. The natural conclusion was, that they could not have been taken directly from the works of the great politician. This was strengthened by the fact that, (with the exception of the Arte della Guerra, a work of minor import, translated by Whitehorne in 1588, and the Storia Fiorentina translated by Bedingfield in 1595) the weightiest writings of Machiavelli remained nuenglished till Dacre's version of the Discorsi in 1636 and of the Principe in 1640: i. E. His real political axiomswere not given to the English public. In its own language until half a century after the dramatists were making or rather, thought they were making, such prodigal use of the same.
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