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The morality of revenge is debated through the plot of the Spanish Tragedy specifically. Physically embodied as a guide for the ghost of the murdered Andrea, Paul Piatkowski argues that Revenge fuels the action of the Spanish Tragedy's plot, acting as a physical embodiment of the grief of loss. According to Cassandra Lagunas, the use of personal revenge in this Elizabethan play is especially significant as personal revenge was forbidden by both the church and the state. Thus, she argues that in order for the play to be as popular and well-received by the public, Kyd needed to make Hieronimo's reasoning for revenge transcend beyond his own personal desires. Hieronimo's pursuit for revenge and subsequent scheme is open to moral-based judgement, but the question many scholars face is whether the responsibility and fault of Hieronimo's desire for revenge belongs solely to him. In one theory, Steven Justice proposes that the fault lies not in Hieronimo, but rather in the society at the time. It is argued that Kyd used the revenge tragedy to give body to popular images of Catholic Spain. Kyd tries to make Spain the villain in that he shows how the Spanish court gives Hieronimo no acceptable choice. The court turns Hieronimo to revenge in pursuit of justice, when in reality it is quite different.

Some critics claim that Hieronimo's attitude is what central Christian tradition calls the Old Law, the Biblical notion of an "eye for an eye". Hieronimo's passion for justice in society is revealed when he says, "For blood with blood shall, while I sit as judge, / Be satisfied, and the law discharg'd" (III.vi.35–36). Ian McAdams posits the idea that the complication of the situation allowed Hieronimo's private justice to be taken as public or divine justice. As Ernst de Chickera argues, the failure of the king, the embodiment of God on Earth, to enact divine justice on the murderers of Hieronimo's son, Horatio, allows Hieronimo to step in as a divine tool of the heavens. In fact, this argument states that Hieronimo's initial seeking out of justice through the king/ higher powers absolves Hieronimo of the sin of enacting private justice. Some scholars that argue that in his revenging his son's death only after all other avenues have been exhausted, Hieronimo demonstrates Reformation attitudes which model that of St. Peter in which humans can be used in order to enact divine justice on Earth. This interpretation is complicated by the use of pagan theology and Revenge's own close proximity to the Greek, rather than the Christian, afterlife. Other scholars depict Hieronimo's revenge as a result of human desires. Piatkowski argues that revenge is simply a physical manifestation of grief and the need to mimic the action of loss. In this interpretation, Hieronimo is simply a part of a cycle of revenge which he has succumbed to. Other interpretations which argue that Hieronimo's revenge was private and human go as far as to say that his intentions were seditious, directly opposing the king and attempts for unity between Spain and Portugal through the marriage of Bel Imperia and Balthazar.