King Charles III and Shakespeare

He’s shared Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech from the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company  and has quoted Shakespeare in numerous speeches, from his first as king to his most recent at the White House during his state visit at the end of April.

Quoting Shakespeare at the White House State Dinner
April 28, 2026

“This city, Washington DC, is the home of more Shakespeare Folios than anywhere in the world. 82 copies are carefully preserved and shared at the Folger Library. And at this time where the search for peace in the world, is more crucial than ever, I can only turn to Shakespeare’s genius to remind us of the plea for peace, spoken by the Duke of Burgundy at the conclusion of Henry V:  “my speech entreats, that I may know…why gentle Peace should not…bless us with her former qualities.”

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From the King’s speech | Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2

BURGUNDY: My duty to you both, on equal love,
Great kings of France and England. That I have
labored
With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavors
To bring your most imperial Majesties
Unto this bar and royal interview,
Your Mightiness on both parts best can witness.
Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed
That face to face and royal eye to eye
You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me
If I demand before this royal view
What rub or what impediment there is
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unprunèd, dies. Her hedges, even-pleached,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disordered twigs. Her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
That should deracinate such savagery.
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, withal uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs,
Losing both beauty and utility.
And all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country,
But grow like savages, as soldiers will
That nothing do but meditate on blood,
To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,
And everything that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favor
You are assembled, and my speech entreats
That I may know the let why gentle peace
Should not expel these inconveniences
And bless us with her former qualities.
—Henry V, Act 5, scene 2

A lifelong love of Shakespeare

The King delighted audiences around the world when he shared his reading of “to be or not to be” along with some of our most acclaimed Hamlets for the BBC’s Shakespeare Live! program in 2016. No stranger to the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Charles III served as the RSC’s president for more than 25 years before succeeding his mother as Patron in 2024.

Charles III’s interest in theater dates all the way back to his school days. In boarding school at Gordonstoun, he played the Duke of Exeter in Henry V and the title role in Macbeth when he was 17, receiving favorable notices in The Sunday Telegraph. At Cambridge, he was part of the Dryden Society, the performing arts group at Trinity College. He wrote and performed in sketches which his mother attended.

In the King’s adult life, Shakespeare continues to play a role. Kenneth Branagh came to him for advice about being a royal as he prepared for the film of Henry V. Charles III edited a collection of favorite Shakespeare speeches, The Prince’s Choice, and for the audiobook, he recorded a scene from Henry IV, Part 1, with him as Prince Hall alongside Sir Robert Stephens as Falstaff. One of his gifts for Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday: a video recording of Archbishop Cranmer’s last lines from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII on the birth of the future Queen:

She shall be to the happiness of England
An agèd princess; many days shall see her,
And yet no day without a deed to crown it.

His speeches have often included quotes from Shakespeare, too. His first speech as king—a loving tribute to his “darling Mama”—ended with a line from Hamlet: “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” He returned to Shakespeare’s Henry VIII in his first speech to Parliament. “As Shakespeare says of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was ‘a pattern to all princes living.’”

We look forward to seeing which Shakespeare play or poem the King will quote from next.