With cat-like tread…
The hidden Masonic meanings of The Pirates of Penzance
G&S — a wildly successful double act
William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan formed one of the late 19th Century’s most successful artistic collaborations.
As individuals, both men were prolific. Gilbert wrote about 80 plays and other literature, and Sullivan composed a wide range of orchestral and other music. But their solo efforts made little lasting impact compared to the comic operas that they wrote together, some of which remain on high rotation nearly 150 years on.
Their farcical stories, witty lyrics, and memorable tunes were hugely popular in their day, both in Britain and in the USA. Their operettas brought fame and considerable wealth.
Probably the best known and loved of their operettas today remain The Mikado — a story based in the fictional Japanese town of Titipu (yes, pronounced in as puerile a way as you would hope) — and The Pirates of Penzance, set on the coast of Cornwall. That’s where we’re going today.
Pirates ploughing the seas in a paradox
Pirates of Penzance, subtitled The Slave of Duty, is a very silly story based around a paradox — a logical but completely nonsensical situation.
An apprentice pirate, Frederic, having reached the age of 21, declares that he will leave his band of pirates and return to civilised, law-abiding society. It was only through a misunderstanding that he was apprenticed to the pirates as a young boy in the first place, because his nursemaid, Ruth, misheard Frederic’s father, who had wanted the lad apprenticed to a ship’s pilot.
Resolved but full of regret, Frederic informs the pirates that once he leaves them, it will be his melancholy duty to bring about their destruction. However, the tables are turned, and the pirates point out that Frederic is contractually obliged to stay with them. He is indentured to them until his 21st birthday, but because Frederic was born on leap-day — 29th February, which only comes around once every four years — he may be 21 years old but has in fact only had five birthdays.
If he is to faithfully fulfil the terms of the apprenticeship agreement, he has to remain with the pirates until he has had 21 actual birthdays. If you do the sums, this means that Frederic will be apprenticed to them until he is in his 80s! Frederic is an honourable man with a great sense of duty, and knows the pirates have got him on a technicality. This plot hinges on this farcical situation.
What has Pirates of Penzance got to do with Freemasonry?
On the surface of it, absolutely nothing. Pirates is just a screwball comedy about some kind-hearted seafaring outlaws, a bunch of inept but equally kind-hearted policemen who are trying to catch them, an innocent young man caught in an impossible situation not of his making, his loyal but not entirely honest nursemaid who got him into this mess in the first place, a pompous Major-General, and his vast number of daughters. Spoiler: it all works out in the end.
None of this bears an obvious relationship to Freemasonry. There are no references to secret handshakes, no aprons, no squares or compasses, indeed nothing overtly Masonic. The references to Freemasonry are much more subtle than this, and to find them it is necessary to dig much deeper with a trowel of your choice.
G&S as Freemasons
As a starting point, it is helpful to know that both William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were Freemasons. They both progressed through the three regular levels of Freemasonry, and went on to higher orders, including the highly secretive and cryptic Royal Arch.
Although it is well-known that both men were Masons — as was their promoter Richard D’Oyly Carte — I have found little suggestion that this might have influenced the content of their operettas, beyond the fact that Freemasonry was something they had in common and was the likely reason a mutual acquaintance introduced them to one another. If anything, Masonic influence on their work has been dismissed or downplayed as an idea.
I am not in a position to comment on any possible masonic content in most of the G&S operettas because I am not deeply familiar with them, but Pirates is the one I know best. After following a few threads of suspicion, there is clearly a lot going on in this operetta. This isn’t going to be a definitive analysis of G&S and Freemasonry, just some preliminary observations to get the ball rolling. There may well be more to find.
The Holy Royal Arch
Royal Arch Freemasonry, which both G&S were inducted into, is, or at least once was, hugely secretive and esoteric, and is often described by people writing about it as confusing. The Royal Arch sits above the three standard orders of British Freemasonry, and ascending to this level is when Masons learn deeper secrets including new names for God.
Having earlier learnt that they must keep their Masonic knowledge secret, in the Royal Arch members find that secret knowledge — the lost name of God — is written down, or rather is engraved on gold plaques. Though written down, once they have decoded it, they do not disclose it.
I cannot be certain, but suspect that this paradox — disclosure without disclosure — explains why Masons such as G&S, Elgar, and any number of other bretheren, have threaded covert, but nevertheless jaw-droppingly overt, Masonic references into their public-facing works using words, symbols and numbers. Here are some Masonic threads I could find woven into the fabric of Pirates of Penzance.
Why is the story set in Penzance?
This turns out to be one of the biggest clues that there might be other Masonic content in Pirates. The Biblical figure of John the Baptist features strongly in Freemasonry, and he is thought to have been patron saint of Mediaeval stone masons. Amongst other places, St John is patron-saint of Penzance. So there is one mark on the Masonic chalk board.
A contemporary of Jesus, John the Baptist is noted for embodying the value that faith and religious belief are less important than acting on that belief by being charitable to your fellow humans. Freemasonry is strongly associated with charity and philanthropy, and in the early 19th Century the order used this fact to cement its acceptance at a time when secret societies were becoming seen as a threat to the Establishment.
Two opposing groups of men, & their reconciliation
In Pirates of Penzance, there are two extremely different bands of men who are set against each other — the unruly Pirates, and the very rules-based Policemen who are trying to capture them and bring them to justice. Both groups of men have their faults and their merits.
The Pirates live outside the law, but they are ultimately not very good at piracy. They have a reputation for being tender-hearted towards orphans because they are all orphans too. The consequence is that anyone they capture claims to be an orphan, and the Pirates let them go unharmed. In the operetta the Major-General character takes advantage of this.
For their part, the Policemen are only trying to do their job of law enforcement, but they, too, are not terribly good at what they do. They try to fortify each other, but as their song When the Foeman Bears His Steel reveals, they are scared of confrontation. Furthermore, although they reluctantly do their constabulary duty, they have a deep pity for the criminals they pursue and are acutely aware of their humanity. This is the reason that A Policeman’s Lot is Not a Happy One.
In my interpretation, these two groups of men — the Pirates and the Policemen — represent two historically rival factions of Freemasons who were eventually reconciled 66 years before Pirates of Penzance premiered. The Pirates represent the radical Ancients, and the Policemen represent the Establishment-aligned Moderns.
When secret societies were being outlawed in Britain in the early 19th Century because they could be used as cover to plot a revolution, the Ancients and Moderns agreed to unite and resolve their differences to ensure their mutual survival. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Moderns had already allied themselves to the Hanoverian monarchy, and then succeeded in bringing the Ancients into the royalist fold too.
This loyalty to the Hanoverian monarchy, and alignment with Protestantism, ensured that Freemasonry remained legal in Britain. The Ancients and Moderns merged into the United Grand Lodge of England in 1813.
In Pirates of Penzance, the Establishment men (the Policemen) reluctantly go about bringing the band of radicals (the Pirates) to heel, but they ultimately reconcile their differences and everyone lives happily ever after.
Crucially, when all looks lost, the Policemen appeal to the Pirates to turn themselves in, out of sheer loyalty to the Hanoverian monarch of the day:
“We charge you yield, in Queen Victoria’s name.”
The Pirates immediately answer:
“We yield at once, with humbled mien, for with all our faults we love our Queen.”
The Pirates are left to go free and return to society — and resume their seats in Parliament — because right at the end of the operetta it turns out that they are no lowlifes after all. Rather, ‘they are all noblemen who have gone wrong’. This tale of redemption fits with one of the central tenets of Freemasonry, that it ‘makes good men better’. The Pirates aren’t fundamentally bad people, they are high-born and respectable men who have simply made poor choices in the folly of their youth, and deserve a second chance.
Orphan frequently
The operetta has many characters who are orphans, and it is a theme that comes up repeatedly. The Pirates are all orphans, and that is the key to their tender hearts.
This chimes with Masonic values and activities of the early 19th Century. One of the principal acts of philanthropy that Freemasons engaged in at that time was to fund orphans’ homes to look after the children of deceased Masons, or other destitute children, at a time when they would have otherwise had no sources of support.
This was a truly charitable act that saved children and widows from destitution, but was also another public way that Freemasonry legitimised its existence when it risked being outlawed. More symbolically, all Masons refer to themselves as the son of the widow.
A stone ruin
The second act of Pirates takes place late at night, in a ruined chapel belonging to Major-General Stanley. This is in the grounds of his recently-purchased ‘ancestral home’. Full of guilt, he is mortified that he lied to the Pirates about being an orphan, and he cannot sleep.
He seeks solace among the tombs of his ‘ancestors’. No matter that he is not actually descended from them:
“I don’t know whose ancestors they were, but I know whose ancestors they are”.
The imagery of the ruined religious building refers back to the ruined Temple of Solomon that is of such great importance in Freemasonry. And by communing there with his ‘rent-an-ancestor’ support crew, the Major-General enacts other Masonic principles of reconnecting with lost wisdom from ancient cultures, as well accepting the intertwining of life and death.
The very model of a modern Major-General
In a happier scene, the Major-General sings his signature song, which is a rapid-fire number where he reels off his vast and eclectic knowledge to impress everyone around him. This song is densely packed with Masonic content.
One of the goals of Freemasonry is to produce well-rounded and cultured men, who have gained knowledge in a variety of arts and sciences. Broadly, the Major-General tells us that he holds ‘information vegetable, animal and mineral’. This is a refence to the three divisions of creation in ancient Egyptian belief (animal, vegetable, mineral), which in Freemasonry are represented by the sides of an equilateral triangle.
More specifically, the Major-General’s knowledge spans several of the domains of knowledge that Freemasons are meant to educate themselves in:
Rhetoric which ‘teaches a man to speak ornately or neatly and finely’. The song is full of ornate language from start to finish!
Reasoning which ‘allows a man to discern truth from falsehood’. The Major-General tells us he ‘has a pretty taste for paradox’ — and as we have seen, reasoning around the paradox of Frederic’s leap-year birth is central to the plot of Pirates.
Arithmetic and geometry — he sings:
“I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.”
and
“I’m very good at integral and differential calculus”
and
“In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous”.
Music:
“I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes! Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s din afore. And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.”
To cap off the Masonic references, he even tells us outright that he is a Modern Major-General — recalling that the Moderns were the Establishment-aligned branch of Freemasonry, represented by the Policemen. One wonders what pompous Masonic Grand Master, or Masters, this puffed-up character was inspired by!
Frederic
The main character of Pirates of Penzance, Frederic, is a young and idealistic man with a strong moral compass and a sense of duty. Significantly, he is an Apprentice pirate. Those taking their initial steps into Freemasonry, its First Degree, are termed Entered Apprentices, strongly linking Frederic’s position to that of a novice Mason. He has conflicted loyalties between the band of outlaw pirates and the rest of civilised society, to which he longs to return.
It is possible that his name references Prince Frederick, a Protestant prince who reluctantly accepted the crown of Bohemia in 1619 out of a sense of duty, amid the 30 Years War that divided Europe along Catholic and Protestant lines.
Frederick V of Bohemia was linked to Britain via his marriage to Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI of Scotland/James I of England. Significantly, when King Frederick was in conflict with the Catholics in Continental Europe, Protestant King James did not provide the military support his son-in-law hoped for, and his Protestant ‘allies’ ultimately signed a treaty declaring neutrality in the conflict. He was effectively hung out to dry.
King Frederick has been linked to the Royal Arch order of Freemasonry, and there is a possible echo of his abandonment by his allies in Pirates of Penzance. When the Policemen are called upon to protect the Major-General from the Pirates, the Policemen show up — but hide.
Ruth
Frederic’s nursemaid is called Ruth. In Pirates she is an unmarried older woman who is the maid-of-all-work for the Pirates. But Biblical Ruth is a widow in search of protection in a foreign land. She finds that protection in marrying a wealthy relative named Boaz.
Although the character of Ruth does not seem to have much in common with Biblical Ruth (other than the fact that she is also in search of a husband and has designs on young Frederic), the use of this name ties her closely to Freemasonry. Apart from being Biblical Ruth’s husband, Boaz is also the name of one of the pillars holding up Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, a column which figures in every Masonic Lodge.
As a virtuous woman, Biblical Ruth is recognised as one of the five heroines of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic-affiliated organisation founded in 1850 that is open to both men and women.
Mabel, one of the Major-General’s daughters, actually seems to have more in common with Biblical Ruth than the character of Ruth does herself. Mabel is distinguished by her kindness towards the errant Frederic, and by her loyalty to him when she finds out the terrible news that he is bound to the Pirates for decades to come. Kindness and loyalty to her mother-in-law are the notable characteristics for which Biblical Ruth is esteemed.
A numbers game
As I previously wrote about in relation to Elgar’s Enigma Variations, weaving references to numbers that are of significance to Masonry into music was a major manifestation of Elgar’s Freemasonry in his work — primarily multiples of 3, and the number 14. So too in Pirates of Penzance, although G&S are rather more subtle about it. Here are some examples:
Pirates was first performed in 1879, 66 years after the Ancients and Moderns merged and reconciled in 1813.
The story concerns leap years, which have 366 days.
Frederic’s birthday falls on leap day, 29th February, which is the 60th day of the year.
When you do the sums, if Frederic is 21 now, and has only had five birthdays, he still has 63 years left to serve of his apprenticeship in order to get to his 21st birthday; this is not spelled out in the opera, you have to work this out for yourself.
When Frederic finishes his apprenticeship in the ‘distant year of 1940’, he will be 84 calendar years old — which is 6 x 14.
Well played, G&S.
If there is any reason to think there might be more Masonic symbolism to be found in their other operettas — consider the fact that Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on 14 operas in total.
