Peter Luke's famous and very popular play is derived (at some remove) from a curious novel published in 1904 and written by a notorious man named Frederick William Rolfe, who sometimes published under the pseudonym of "Baron Corvo". Rolfe often shortened his first name to "Fr.", to give the entirely erroneous impression that he was a Catholic priest. He died, penniless and alone, in Venice in 1913, at the age of 53. It is the conceit of Luke's play that Rolfe himself becomes the protagonist of his own, highly fantastic plot about an Englishman who unexpectedly becomes Pope.