This performance mirrors the actual events surrounding Horatio's death, and within this show Hieronimo commits his own acts of revenge against the perpetrators.
He is letting the play define what revenge means to him, "a force sent from the underworld when the judges fail, a demonic urge that promises a perverse 'joy amidst ...
"By imagining Spain to be Babylon and by making the villains of his playlet be Turks, Hieronimo reinforces his earlier idea that heaven is at work in his revenge".
In "The Spanish Tragedy, The Alencon Marriage Plans, and John Stubbs's Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf", by Andrew Hadfield, the plausibility of how the King had no idea that Horatio was murdered is brought up.
Hadfield raises a good point when he says that "There is a mismatch between the needs of the state and the desires of the individuals within it, a situation that has tragic results when Hieronimo stages his deadly play to complete the cycle of revenge".
[12] Ardolino believes that Thomas Kyd intended for his audience to take the second viewpoint; that Hieronimo is a "morally justified private revenger ...".
[13] He comes to this conclusion through the claim that Kyd indicates this by "the epilogue, which presents the apotheosis of Hieronimo and his accomplice, Bel-imperia, as well as Horatio and Isabella, in the pagan underworld".
[15] "Once we [Andrea and we as a collective theater audience] recognize that this is why he has been back to earth, then we can understand why the prince is doomed to die and how his death satisfies Hieronimo's personal vengeance and fulfills pagan justice".
[16] According to Ardolino, Kyd makes a point to his audience through the onstage presence of Revenge that Andrea has been allowed to "return to earth with the embodiment of pagan justice to witness the enforcement of a just vengeance against his murderers".
[16] Ardolino concludes that through being an outside viewer of what is taking place in the Spanish court, Don Andrea learns to "equate Hieronimo's quest for a just revenge with the reasons for his return to earth".
According to him the dilemma that Hieronimo finds himself in opens "an abrupt and dramatically effective contrast between the Christian ideal of patience and humility and the classical-pagan concept of honor".
[18] After the initial discovering of Horatio's murderers, Hieronimo, as the knight marshal, first turns to the King and the instituted system of justice for help.
However, "when that preferred and sanctioned way is blocked for him by the calculating efforts of his enemies, Hieronimo is forced to choose between alternatives neither one of which is wholly acceptable to him".
Ay, heaven will be revenged of every ill, Nor will they suffer murder unrepaid: Then stay, Hieronimo, attend their will, For mortal men may not appoint their time.
Firstly, he believes that Thomas Kyd's drama is much simpler than Shakespeare's, and that it is this simplicity that opens the doors for the audience to truly see the "furies that drive his characters".
[26] Both characters are torn up with grief over the news of the unjust murder committed against their family member, but Hieronimo is able to maintain control over his emotions and not allow them to cloud his motivations throughout the majority of the play.
[27] "Hieronimo remains master of his emotions until his vengeance is complete ... he is never rash enough to alarm his intended victims, and he eventually deceives them so thoroughly that they embrace him as a friend".
"His self-criticisms are seldom triggered by inner motivation, and it takes external objects to rouse him from the gloomy lassitude which is his normal state of being in the play" says Levin of Prince Hamlet's behavior.
Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so his own conceit ..." He ultimately only takes action because his Uncle Claudius leaves him no choice.