Comedy is huge in Early Modern Italy! Things like comedia dell' arte and commedia erudita are invented. The people want to laugh when they go to the theatre. Playwrights need to be careful though. It is ok for characters to be critical of royalty but NOT real people. This is why these two new forms of comedy are invented. In The Mandrake Root we should keep in mind that this play was an honor for for a marriage. The marriage of the son of Piero the Gouty, Lorenzo de'Medici. This was meant to be performed for a certain audience and Machiavelli knew that. The way this needs to be performed today (to do justice to the script) is as if the audience is the characters' personal friend.
Commedia dell Arte literally means comedy of art or commedy of the profession. It is based on improvisation and emphasis is on the "manner of performance" rather than the "sbbject matter of the play." http://www.theatrehistory.com/italian/commedia_dell_arte_001.html. Commedia dell Arte flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but was around for four hundred years and exsisted before and after this time, according to the above mentioned source.