Heavy lies the head: Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles in The Crown
Credit: Des Willie / Netflix
In season three of The Crown, a student Prince Charles (played by Josh O’Connor), voices one of the most melancholy speeches in Richard II: “Within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king/ keeps Death his court.” He invests Richard’s words, which reflect on the human vulnerability of every monarch, with a poignant sense of premature personal understanding.
We know that the heir apparent is still keen on Shakespeare, not least because he’s president of the RSC, in which capacity he stepped onto the Stratford-upon-Avon stage in 2016 to deliver a mock-perfect rendition of the line “To be or not to be” for the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death. He even played Prince Hal in a 1995 recording of a scene from Henry IV Part 1, goading Robert Stephens as Falstaff, for an audio book accompanying his own Shakespeare anthology.
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