You don’t need to read the entrails of a raven to guess the target of the subtitle The Mad King: the various Brutuses plotting his fall conclude that the “paranoid and delusional” monarch will destroy their civilisation. The focus, though, is not just Trumpian. Macmillan references two wider international crises – the instability of heads of state and the weather – and a UK national concern: the endurance of a royal bloodline. The RSC’s patron, King Charles III, might skip this one.
