File:Players and plays of the last quarter century; an historical summary of causes and a critical review of conditions as existing in the American theatre at the close of the nineteenth century (1903) (14581313098).jpg

Identifier: playersplaysofla02strauoft (find matches)
Title: Players and plays of the last quarter century; an historical summary of causes and a critical review of conditions as existing in the American theatre at the close of the nineteenth century
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Strang, Lewis Clinton, 1869-1935
Subjects: Theater -- History Theater -- United States Acting and actors
Publisher: Boston, L.C. Page
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
that casts a glamour of mystery and romance
without actually destroying the sense of real-
ity, things that are all of them valuable
accessories without any one of them being
absolute necessities.
In dealing with the vagabond poet of
France of the fifteenth century, Mr. McCarthy
did not choose wholly novel material, for other
dramas have dallied in the same fertile pas-
tures. However, that fact bears not a feath-
ers weight against the contention that Mr.
McCarthy has written the François Villon
play of his day and generation. This charac-
ter, so full of light and shade, of pure idealism
and debasing filthiness, is dramatic without
the touch of the dramatist. François Villon
— to use the name by which he is known in
literature, though in life he had as many
aliases as a cat has lives — was born in 1431
and died in 1461, or thereabouts. In 1455
came the first important incident of his life, so
far as is known, a fight with a priest named
Philippe Sermaiee, who was so severely
wounded by Villon that he died. Villon was
Text Appearing After Image:
EDWARD H. SOTHERN
As François Villon in " If I Were King "

Six Representative Plays 87
—————————————
banished from Paris, but was pardoned six
months later. A year after that, Katherine de
Vancelles, of whom quite frequent mention is
made in Villon's poems, was the cause of a
second quarrel, which brought Villon such a
flogging that in very shame he left the city.
During his absence he was accused of robbing
a church, arrested on his return, tortured, and
sentenced to be hanged. This was, however,
commuted to banishment. Four years then
passed without tidings of Villon, but when
Louis XI. ascended the throne in 1461, the
poet was again in jail, being one of those
released therefrom by royal clemency at the
time of the coronation. The time and the
manner of Villon's end are not known, but his
death probably occurred not long after this
last experience.
In his play Mr. McCarthy utilised as one the
two separate episodes of the fight with the
priest and the row in which Katherine de
Vancelles was in some way mixed up. The
main incident of the drama — the transform-

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