Hadrian VII

Frederick William Rolfe, alias Baron Corvo, was one of the more freakishly talented eccentrics of English letters. A homosexual, a paranoiac, a scoundrel, a petty blackmailer and a fake, he was constantly in debt, sponged on his friends, excoriated his enemies and died in 1913 in self-imposed exile in Venice. At 26 he converted to Roman Catholicism and trained for the priesthood. Twice dismissed from seminaries, he retained a lifelong conviction of his priestly vocation.

A wine merchant of prose--witty, luxuriant, Latinate--Rolfe poured out a minor masterpiece of wish fulfillment in his novel Hadrian VII, an account of how a once-rejected candidate for the priesthood was astonishingly elected Pope out of a clear blue Roman sky. Now Hadrian has been skillfully dramatized by Peter Luke, who also relies on A.J.A. Symons' biography of Rolfe, The Quest for Corvo. The result is an effulgent theatrical success in a wan London dramatic season.

The play's climactic scene finds Rolfe (who is called George Arthur Rose in the novel) gossiping with his bishop about the long drawn-out election of a new Pope. With malice towards everyone, Rolfe is as agile as a marmoset, and a sharp-toothed incessant talker. The talk is hushed as chanting begins in the rear of the theater. With measured tread, the Sacred College advances down the two long aisles in a swirl of scarlet and incense. As the cardinals reach the stage, they pause before the bishop and the priest: "Wilt thou accept pontificality?" Rolfe turns to kneel to his bishop, so unexpectedly chosen, only to find that the prelate is already kneeling to him. "Wilt thou accept pontificality?" The bishop whispers: "The answer is 'Volo' or 'Nolo.' " For an instant, terrified gratification flashes across Rolfe's face. Then the thin shoulders square: "Volo."

This moment of high theatricality, enhanced by the commanding performance of Alec McCowen, is followed by a dozen others as Rolfe seizes the reins of Vatican government with reforming zeal. With curious prescience, Rolfe's vision anticipates changes that took place in the Catholic Church half a century later. Pope Hadrian shakes the Curia to its foundation by renouncing all claim to temporal sovereignty, and defies tradition by walking through the streets to his coronation. He sells the Vatican treasures and gives the proceeds to the poor. Homelier touches include Hadrian giving an audience to a charwoman who had once befriended the "spoiled priest" and who now brings him a jar of her own pickled onions. In the end, as the fantasy grows more fevered, Hadrian is shot to death by an English Socialist agitator who had long been his personal enemy.

But that is not truly the finish, since the play--bizarre, hallucinatory and electrifying--is framed within a play. Hadrian VII ends where it begins, in the bare, shabby lodgings of an eccentric, starving, middle-aged writer named Frederick William Rolfe as the bailiffs arrive to strip him even of the manuscript of his novel. The papal reign has all been a dream, an illusion: the primal stuff of theater.

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