JOHN HERBERT, a drag queen, pioneering gay playwright and “mordant gadfly” of the Canadian theatre scene in the 1960s and 70s, died at his Toronto home on this date. He was 74 and had been ill for a month after undergoing a biopsy for prostate cancer Herbert was best known as the author of Fortune and Men’s Eyes, his 1964 play that mercilessly exposed the homosexual reality of prison culture.