ABSTRACT
Pirates were figures used by Elizabethan writers to discuss the ideological co-ordinates of overseas adventure and the cultural construction of imperial ambitions; this chapter discusses these themes in relation to a variety of Elizabethan drama, including Shakespeare’s plays of the ‘Long 1590s’ – Twelfth Night (16001601), Hamlet (Q1 1603; Q2 1604-1605), and Pericles (1606-1609). The first three chapters of this study have focused on exemplary pirates of different types – Purser and Clinton, Drake, Pyrocles – in order to reveal how these figures focused important contemporary debates concerned with the relationship between political power and maritime alterity. The three remaining chapters of The Culture of Piracy discuss the ways these models influence subsequent discussions of the complexities and cross-currents of English global expansion; they also consider later types of pirate figures which emerge as a response to changing political conditions and challenges.
