The Haunting of King Charles III

This chapter focuses on Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III, a ‘virtual history’ play which imagines the prospective succession of Charles III. In so doing, it revisits a number of themes in constitutional jurisprudence which were introduced in the previous chapter. Most obviously those which examine the relationship of the executive and the legislative. At the same time, the chapter also discusses, in greater depth, the theatricality of monarchy. Taking its lead, here, from the famous demarcation found in Walter Bagehot’s English Constitution, between the ‘dignified’ and the ‘efficient’. It can be argued that the ‘play’ of monarchy is every bit as relevant today as it was a century and a half ago.