Charles III is made for numbskulls by numbskulls

Suppose Charles were to reign as a meddlesome, self-pitying, indecisive plonker. It’s a thought. It’s now a play, too, by Mike Bartlett. In his opening scene he bumps off Lilibet, bungs her in a box and assembles the family at Buck House to discuss ‘what next?’ Bartlett imagines them as stuck-up divs. William’s a self-righteous sourpuss. Kate’s a smug minx. Camilla’s a hectoring gadfly. Harry’s a weepy drunk. Charles is a colossally narcissistic nuisance. They’re too dim to understand the constitution so Camilla has to explain that a new reign commences with the death of the previous monarch and not at the coronation. (This is for the benefit of the audience, who are assumed to have the same poultry-level IQ as the Windsors.) The plot cranks into gear when Charles is asked to give royal assent to a bill he dislikes. He refuses. Westminster panics. Charles dissolves Parliament. Anarchists run riot. Abdication fever threatens Britain. And all because Charles has failed to draw any lessons from the biography of Charles I. Or even to have read it. Which seems improbable. As does the skittish impotence of the prime minister, who flaps ineffectually while the head of state smashes the state to smithereens. A real prime minister would buy Charles’s co-operation very easily by treating him like a troublesome backbencher and offering to promote his pet projects with a raft of upcoming legislation. But the play’s political antennae have been snipped off. Bartlett is after a Shakespearean atmosphere, so he uses stilted iambic pentameters, laced with archaisms. ‘What is it, husband, troubles you like this?’ He sometimes misuses words, ‘aloft’ for ‘aloof’, ‘distract’ for ‘distracted’, ‘holds’ for ‘warrants’. Sometimes he makes words up. William, awoken by a scream, says, ‘What a strange and ambulous night.’ When Charles meets his MPs, he treats them to this grammatical mind-boggler: ‘I am not prone to secrecy, but you have drawn that measure in my unsure heart.’