The play of Hadrian VII : based on Hadrian the Seventh and other works by Fr. Rolfe (Baron Corvo)

Peter Luke

This is Luke's adaptation of the brilliant fantasy-autobiography of Fr. Rolfe, also known as Baron Corvo. Rolfe's novel was an upsurge of twenty years of bitterness and frustration against the Roman Church for its refusal to accept him as a priest. In this theatrical version Luke catches the mordant, almost perverse humour of the original: the story of Tolfe's eleveation to the Papacy and the command of the very hierarchy that had rejected him, of his threat to destroy the temporal power of the Church, and of his highly ambiguous end.