offers the first systematic study of an important and heretofore insufficiently-studied phenomenon in Renaissance Europe.

"This book will be of great interest to students in political theory and the history of political thought. The so-called of Machiavelli’s masterpiece has a long history; however, this is the first time that this reading has been proposed in a radically new way, taking into account how Machiavelli’s friends would have read the soon after its completion. The way Ward deals with the tradition of innuendo is something entirely new and will spark a lively debate among scholars of Machiavelli."—Paolo Carta, Professor of the History of Political Thought, The University of Trento