This book explores how Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet follows in the footsteps of Dante's revival of Platonic poetry. Through careful analysis of the play, Marco Andreacchio uncovers surprising lessons bearing significantly on matters of politics, religion and philosophy, and that Shakespeare would offer us by way of leading us to the discovery of his original overarching intent as playwright.

The study shows how Shakespeare guides readers on a spiritual journey—helping them rediscover divine agency within human desire, so as to best understand the latter in the former. Rather than breaking from medieval Christian scholarship, Shakespeare's work vindicates its Platonic dimension, standing against anti-Platonic intellectual currents that find their radicalization in Machiavelli and his literary heirs.

For the first time in centuries, this book demonstrates that Shakespeare's work offers a viable alternative to the machiavellian reduction of politics to ideology, or to the progressive mechanization of human life that has fueled the rise of barbarism "by another name".