Staging the pirate: the ambiguities of representation and the significance of convention

The tradition of nineteenth-century pirate representation demonstrates a complex intertwining of the strands of popular literature and theatre. Popular theatrical performances included the latest technological developments, and their scripts appropriated fictional narratives and scenes from contemporary painting. Equally, novelists and painters used the theatrical staging of situation and character as modes of representation. As Martin Meisel points out, 'the shared structures in the representational arts constitute not just a common style but a popular style'. At the same time, Meisel argues, nineteenth-century arts and entertainment aspired 'to a union of inward signification, moral and teleological as well as affective, with a weighty, vivid, detailed and documented rendering of reality'. It is within this context that the pirate becomes a key figure in the complex discourse of performance conventions, which themselves embody outward signification and the desire for verisimilitude.