Gentles, perchance you'll wonder at this show
That comes to us with fanfare from abroad.
Mike Bartlett's many earlier plays, like Cock,
Gave us no indication he would write
A drama in blank verse about a king
That's yet to be. It could perhaps have been
A heavy-handed satire like Macbird
The sixties Barbara Garson play in which
Mad LBJ dispatches JFK,
Or else a sprightly Spitting Image sketch.
But author Bartlett has much more to say.
He's given us a deeper work in which
He boldly questions what's a monarch for?