The Pope’s Daughter: The winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature, Italian playwright Dario Fo died this week at the age of 90. His attempts to levy heavy criticism at both politics and religion often hit home. Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano greeted his Nobel announcement by writing, “Giving the prize to someone who is also the author of questionable works is beyond imagination.” His wife was horrifically kidnapped by a right-wing group with ties to Italy’s national police, and the United States refused to let the couple into the country because of their ties to the Italian Communist Party. For his part, Fo demanded that art make sense in local terms: “A theater, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance,” he said when accepting his Nobel prize.
Fo’s The Pope’s Daughter: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia is a not a play but a work of prose fiction. It examines all sides of political power via a new look at one of history’s most maligned rulers: Renaissance Italy’s Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of a notoriously abusive pope and no stranger to political intrigue. She was also, as Fo illustrates here, the only woman to have served, so far, as head of the Catholic Church; founder of the world’s first credit union; and a generous arts patron. In Fo’s hands Borgia is recast in her role as political figure, ultimately devoted wife, and the world’s first modern woman.
