The essay offers a new reading of the “masterwork of Renaissance drama”, “the perfect comedy”, namely Niccolò Machiavelli’s Mandragola, where the character of Lucretia emerges as the symbolic satirical double of the Prince, who can “bene usare la bestia e l’uomo” (“well use both beast and man”) (XVIII, 4). A dialogue between the Florentine writer’s comedy and his political works is outlined, in order to clarify the meaning of the metamorphosis experienced by the most “anti-canonical” person in the play, and to elucidate its disorienting denouement,which many scholars have termed enigmatic, ambiguous and puzzling. The ending does not resolve but underlines the antinomy between politics and morals, because we – like Machiavelli – cannot justify an act that may be both politically necessary and morally wrong...