Elizabethan law and morality opposes revenge

"The issue was settled. Revenge was a sin against God, a defiance of the State, a cancer that could destroy mind, body and soul -- and that was that." --Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, CA, Stanford Univ. Press, (1967) p.72.

In Hamlet and Revenge, Professor Prosser takes a stand against those who assume that revenge could have been considered a desirable or even an acceptable practice by an Elizabethan audience. She presents a systematic and thorough argument that revenge was abhorred as a violation of civil, religious and personal sanctions. "The issue was settled," says Professor Prosser. "Revenge was a sin against God, a defiance of the State, a cancer that could destroy mind, body and soul -- and that was that" (p.72). Since the issue was a heated one in Shakespeare's time, Prosser has a lot of material upon which to draw.  She cites a rich variety of sermons, legal texts, and moral teachings which all seemed to condemn the practice of private revenge. In particular, she uses Innocent Gentillet's 1602 Discourse...Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine to document what she considers an English aversion for Machiavelli.

In short, Elizabethan moralists condemned revenge as illegal, blasphemous, immoral, irrational, unnatural, and unhealthy -- not to mention unsafe. Moreover, not only did revenge violate religion, law, morality, and common sense, it was thoroughly un-English. Gentilet's translator prays fervently that God will preserve England from the revolting practices of the Italians. --Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, CA, Stanford Univ. Press, (1967) p. 5.

What follows is a development of Prosser's contention that revenge was considered to be immoral, illegal, and unhealthy.