Although the setting of this play is modern, it involves a fictitious encounter between Machiavelli and Richard Pace, a Tudor diplomat. It also involves John Keats and explores the meaning of poetry, love and life. Richard Pace was an important English diplomat during the Tudor period, a younger contemporary of Machiavelli. The meeting described in the play never took place, or did it? At any rate, the aging and broken Machiavelli opens his heart to Pace. This is the beginning of the story.
