Beggar King

              HOWARD TOOLEY Presents The Romantic Musical Play of All Times
The BEGGAR KING
A Most Delightful Musical Play-Bedecked in Color-Rivaling the Rainbow


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A Ballad of Francois Villon
PRINCE OF ALL BALLAD-MAKERS
By Algernon Charles Swinburne



Bird of the bitter bright grey golden morn
Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years,
First of us all and sweetest singer born
Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears
Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears;
When song new-born put off the old world's attire
And felt its tune on her changed lips expire,
Writ foremost on the roll of them that came
Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!
Alas the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn,
That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears,
And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn
And plume-plucked gaol birds for thy starveling peers
Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears;
Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire,
When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire
Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame
Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!
Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn!
Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears!
Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn,
That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers
Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears!
What far delight has cooled the fierce desire
That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire
On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame,
But left more sweet than roses to respire,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!



ENVOI

Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire,
A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire;
Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame.
But from thy feet now death has washed the mire,
Love reads out first at head of all our quire,
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name!






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The
BEGGAR KING
The Story of Francois Villon Student, Poet and Housebreaker, who was made King for a Day


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H. W. D. TOOLEY
Presents
The Beggar King
FRANCOIS VILLON, Poet and Housebreaker is again in the limelight.  Four hundred years after his death, when surely all danger might be considered at an end, a pair of critical spectacles have been applied to his own remains; and though he left behind him a sufficiently ragged reputation from the first, it is only after these four hundred years that we are to assign him to his proper place and pick the good from the bad.

Twenty-five years ago E. H. Southern first made Villon famous in the play called If I Were King.  Next came a musical version of the same play presented by Mr. Russell Janney called The Vagabond King.  About the same time John Barrymore introduced the picturesque character to the screen in the motion picture The Beloved Rogue.

Mr. Howard Tooley who has given the Lyceum, Chautauqua and Concert audiences delightful productions of such operas as The Mikado, H. M. S. Pinafore, Faust, Chimes of Normandy and Bohemian Girl, wishing to always be abreast of the times, now offers these same audiences a new production built around the beloved poet, Francois Villon.

The play is one of the most thrilling ever produced for the concert stage, and will carry the same elaborate scenery and colorful costumes that have made all of the Tooley Operatic Productions popular with audiences for the last ten years.

A special cast has been selected to sing this musical play which abounds in an exquisitely delightful and rousing score.

A. H. ANDERSON PRINTING CO., STREATOR, ILL.