Machiavelian-style revenge for courtiers

Nicolo Machiavelli(1469-1527) -- Italian political and military theorist

It is argued by such writers as Hiram Hyden, in his book The Counter-Renaissance, that there still existed, in the society of courtiers, a code of conduct which contradicted the apparent official judgment against revenge in Elizabethan England. In this social milieu, revenge was attached to the notion of honor and reputation. It is an interesting question, however, whether this was the audience toward which the popular theater of Shakespeare's time was directed. Hyden quotes Sir William Segar's Book of Honour and Armes as a demonstration of his position.

For revenge of such cowardlie and beastiall offenses, it is allowable to use any advantage or subtiltie, according to the Italian proverbe...which is, that one advantage requireth another, and one treason may be with another acquitted. --Sir William Segar, Book of Honour and Armes, (1590), fol. A3r.

A contradictory argument labels this position as retrograde, unrealistic or informed by common fantasy. For the most part, English revenge plays from the end of the sixteenth century or the beginning of the seventeenth century are set not in England nor in Denmark, but in a fictitious Italian past dominated by Machiavellian ruthlessness and expediency.