“The dreadful touch
Of merchant-marring rocks.”
All, however, ends happily, and the argosies, richly laden, arrive in safety.
Piracy on the high seas in Shakespeare’s days may be said to have been of two kinds: that which was practically legalised, for purposes of reprisal on foreign foes, and that which was for private and individual plunder. How prevalent it was may be gathered from the passages indicated below.[88]
In Measure for Measure we find the freebooter’s calling satirised in the comparison: “like the sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table”—that one, of course, being, “Thou shalt not steal.” Their reckless life is literally described by Richard Plantagenet in the Second Part of King Henry VI., where he says—
“Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage,
And purchase friends, and give to courtezans,
Still revelling, like lords, till all be gone”—
while Suffolk dies by pirates later on. In the same historical play King Henry again describes his condition, harassed by the rebel Jack Cade and the troublesome Duke of York, as
“Like to a ship, that having ’scaped a tempest,