If I Were King

François Villon — poet, thief, and the best swordsman in the taverns — boasts in his cups about what he would do if he were king, and Louis XI, who is listening from the next table, gives him a week to make it good. McCarthy sat in Parliament for Irish Home Rule, then left politics for the theatre; this 1901 romance became a play, an opera by Rudolf Friml, and four films.