What is different in Bartlett’s King Charles III is that he does not merely reframe a Shakespearean character drama with a contemporary background, in an attempt to demonstrate the timelessness of the human condition. He does rather the opposite: he takes contemporary social struggles and applies to them the context of an aristocratic political drama. While obviously a conceit, it is also quite a sweeping statement, brushing aside two hundred years of mass democracy within the United Kingdom in the name of pursuing the private dramas and ambitions of Britain’s elites.