The ghost of Don Andrea opens the play with a monologue describing the circumstances of his death in battle and his descent into the underworld.
Andrea laments that he was killed by the Portuguese Prince Balthazar and taken away too soon from his love Bel-imperia.
Hieronimo with Lorenzo is joined in the league And interprets our passage to revenge.
Andrea comes back to tell the audience of his struggles, and Revenge is the supernatural being that oversees the play's descent into tragedy.
As Christopher Crosbie has suggested, the ghost of Andrea is concerned not simply with revenge but with social status and courtly ambition.