As a 2024-2025 Artistic Fellow, I came to the Folger Shakespeare Library with a particular interest in pirates. Not only are they fun and arguably sexy (Our Flag Means Death, anyone?), my artistic project was inspired largely by Antonio from Twelfth Night, a character described by another character, Orsino, as a ‘notable pirate’ and a ‘saltwater thief’. In the play Antonio defends himself, claiming ‘Antonio never yet was thief or pirate’. Yet they both agree that there has been a sea battle, which sounds pretty piratical to me, and Antonio himself admits that some things of value were taken from Orsino’s ships, which is also in line with piracy. What’s going on here? As I discovered during my July at the Folger, it turns out that this disagreement about whether or not Antonio is a pirate is fairly indicative of how piracy was practiced – or not – in Elizabeth’s England. Often, it came down to a matter of perspective.
Before coming to do research at the Folger, much of my knowledge of piracy came from popular culture. Scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean and images of Blackbeard filled my mind’s eye. Surely Shakespeare’s ideas of pirates were similar, I reasoned. Lawless men, bound to no country, king, or state, living their free and barbarous lives upon the seas. ARGH.
![Folger192912 The title page of a play](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2024/08/Folger192912-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C300)
Well…. that was not quite right. Unlike the later ‘Golden Age’ pirates of the Caribbean, a large proportion of Elizabethan pirates were, in fact, Queen Elizabeth’s pirates. In the ongoing tension and war with Spain, and – especially in the start of her reign – with very few ships to call her own, Queen Elizabeth started issuing letters of marque (also known as letters of reprisal) to captains who wanted to raid Spanish ships. The legal argument for letters of marque was based on a sort of ‘tit-for-tat’ attempt to regain any English goods captured by the Spanish, although I personally find it hard to imagine that English ships were often carrying treasure equal to the gold and silver that the Spanish were exporting from their brutal exploitation and mining in the Americas. In fact, the famous Spanish ‘Plate Fleet’ that brough precious metals back from the Americas was a particularly coveted prize by these new ‘privateers’ as the English called them.
The Spanish, naturally enough, referred to them as ‘pirates’.
There were also many famous names among the list of Queen Elizabeth’s privateers/pirates. Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh both sailed under letters of marque, and both the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Southampton were part of an (unsuccessful) attempt to capture the Plate Fleet. Of course, many less well-known captains and sailors tried their luck. Not all of them stuck to raiding and capturing Spanish ships. There are multiple Proclamations issued by Queen Elizabeth warning privateers to stop attacking her ‘friends’ like Venetian merchants. It seems that once they started attacking the wrong people they magically transformed into pirates. Privateers also had to pay financial due to the Queen when they captured Spanish ships, and other Proclamations reprimand sailors for taking goods off of ships before the financial due to the Queen had been paid. Still, despite their sometimes lawless behavior, it is clear that these privateers were valuable to the Crown. There are records of outlaw pirates being offered pardons to come over to the side of privateering and operating under letters of marque rather than independently. Exactly how many were converted this way is somewhat unclear, but I loved the idea of an instantaneous transformation from outlaw to upright citizen, from pirate to privateer.
![STC 8200 A picture of a page of text from a large book starting with a large decorative letter](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2024/08/STC-8200-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C300)
As a final note, the English also referred to the ships of other nations that were operating under letters of marque as ‘pirates’ even though they were using the exact same legal framework as their own ‘privateers’. A matter of perspective, indeed.
So, in Antonio a pirate or a privateer? Perhaps he is one, or perhaps the other. Perhaps he moves about from one state to the other, transformed by these letters of marque. Whatever decision we make regarding his legal status, it is undeniable that this time at the Folger has vastly enriched his world – and mine.
![027257-Medium_6000px A muscular man clings to a rock and reaches out into the ocean to grab another person bound to a log](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2024/08/027257-Medium_6000px-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C300)
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