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Stage and film dramas have fictionalised the lives of Queen Elizabeth II and Diana, Princess of Wales, but rarely has Prince Charles been placed centre stage. The few writers who have imagined him as a future king have tended to portray him as an enlightened hero, a monarch who might stand up to a malign political regime in Westminster.
Eight years ago, the playwright Mike Bartlett, perhaps best known for creating the popular television series Doctor Foster, surprised London theatre audiences with King Charles III.
Written in blank verse, like a modern-day Shakespearean history play, the acclaimed drama told of the accession to the throne of the Queen’s eldest son. This weekend, Bartlett has watched scenes he had dared to envisage for the stage now playing out in real life.
“Sitting at my desk on Friday, I could hear the bells ring out, as they do in my play,” he said. “These first days of hearing the words of King Charles III spoken on television have been strange, along with growing talk of the funeral.”
Writers, Bartlett suspects, have generally not been drawn to describe such an alien world, despite the fact that even when he wrote his own play it was clear that the Queen would die fairly soon and that her son would accede.
In Bartlett’s work, which was premiered in 2014 at the Almeida theatre in Islington, north London, with the late Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role, the new king takes issue with proposed government legislation to limit press freedom. He withstands pressure from parliament and ultimately, from within the royal family. A piece of what Bartlett calls “future history”, it also contains some uncanny predictions.
“Some of the specifics I got wrong,” said Bartlett. “Prince Harry did not go on to marry a republican Londoner, as in my play, but many of the attitudes and basic psychology were there.
