CRITICAL ESSAYS
Portraits by Prudence Whittlesey
“The Natural Fools of Fortune: Machiavelli’s Influence on Shakespeare’s Politics”
A senior thesis in Political Science and English at Yale University.
Winner of the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize for the Most Outstanding Thesis in Political Philosophy.
Winner of the John Hubbard Curtis Prize for an Outstanding English Thesis.
Abstract: This essay argues that Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine philosopher notorious for advocating ruthless political tactics during the Renaissance, is the most important thinker to understanding the works of William Shakespeare. While comparing Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and Prince with Shakespeare’s tragic triptych of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and King Lear, the thesis traces the intellectual history of Machiavelli’s reception in Elizabethan England and posits that Shakespeare sought to reject Machiavelli’s radical metaphysic of free will by dramatizing the teleological vacancy of politics.
CREATIVE NONFICTION
“Scrupulosity”
An identity essay composed for Anne Fadiman’s selective Writing About Oneself seminar and included in the syllabus thereafter.
Winner of the Henry P. Wright Memorial Prize for Excellence in Nonfiction Writing.
“Where Faith Found Me”
Adapted from a speech given before the chapel for publication in the St. Thomas More Magazine.
BRENNAN COLUMBIA-WALSH