Act 4

Shakespeare’s poetry comes to the fore as at war against evil and by extension against Machiavelli, or modernity as a whole. Modernity’s nominalist core is corrected to serve Platonic interests. Theatrically, Paris is at war with Romeo, as the seat/seed of Rome’s corruption pitted against the spiritual citizenship characteristic of men on the path of redemption from all cunning and strife. Juliet’s agency proves pivotal to redemption as purgation, a path involving a radical conversion of all worldly/vulgar impulses. The real conflict is not between “stars” and the private life of lovers, but between the poetic path redeeming privacy and censors or “watchers” seeking to crucify poetry. Hence the importance of Shakespeare’s defense of poetry via a vindication of the immortality of poetic forms or muses met as pure vehicles of resurrection.