Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Cultural depictions of Charles I of England

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Charles I of England has been depicted in popular culture a number of times.

Contents

Music

  • Curse My Name, a song by German power metal band Blind Guardian on the album At the Edge of Time (2010), depicts the downfall and execution of Charles I.

    • Literature

  • Jowitt views the character of the gentleman Vitelli in Massinger's 1624 play The Renegado as an allegory of the prince during the failed marriage attempt.
  • There is the manuscript of play entitled Charles I by Percy Shelley, started in early 1822 and left unfinished after his death.
  • Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas, gives a highly fictionalised account of Charles I's downfall, trial and death condensed into a few days. The book's fictional villain, Mordaunt, is depicted as the king's executioner, while Athos, Aramis, D'Artagnan and Porthos are his secret - and unsuccessful - helpers.
  • The Civil War period is seen through the eyes of the fictional Morland family in The Oak Apple, Volume 4 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
  • 55 Days (2012 - played in the premiere production by Mark Gatiss)
  • He makes a brief but memorable appearance in Lawrence Norfolk's John Saturnall's Feast, published in September 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
  • He's a character in The King's Spy by Andrew Swanston, set mainly in Oxford; the novel was published in August 2012 by Bantam Press.
  • In Traitor's Field by Robert Wilton, published in May 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing, the reader follows him from his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight to his trial and, ultimately, execution in Whitehall.
  • Makes an appearance in Elizabeth Goudge's 1958 novel, The White Witch, set during the Civil War.

    • Film and television

    On screen, Charles has been portrayed by:

  • Russell Thorndike in the British silent film Henrietta Maria; or, The Queen of Sorrow (1923)
  • Henry Victor in the British silent film The Royal Oak (1923), in which he also played Charles II
  • Hugh Miller in The Vicar of Bray (1937)
  • Robert Rietty in The Scarlet Blade (1963)
  • Stephen MacDonald in the BBC TV drama series Witch Wood (1964)
  • Kenneth Colley in a drama in the BBC TV series Thirty-Minute Theatre entitled Revolutions: Cromwell (1970)
  • Alec Guinness in Cromwell (1970)
  • Jeremy Clyde in the BBC TV drama series The Children of the New Forest (1977) and By the Sword Divided (1983)
  • Stephen Fry in the BBC TV comedy short Blackadder: The Cavalier Years (1988), with very similar mannerisms to the current Prince of Wales
  • Bill Paterson in The Return of the Musketeers (1989), loosely based on the novel Twenty Years After
  • Aleksei Petrenko in the Russian film Mushketyory 20 let spustya (1992), also based on Twenty Years After
  • Chris Kirk in the British TV drama documentary Civil War: England's Fight for Freedom (1997)
  • Rupert Everett in To Kill a King (2003)
  • Martin Turner briefly at the beginning of the BBC TV miniseries Charles II: The Power & the Passion (2003)
  • Peter Capaldi in Channel 4's four-part TV drama series The Devil's Whore (2008)
  • Mathew Baynton and Adam Riches in the British children's sketchshow Horrible Histories (2009 - 2015)

    • References

    Cultural depictions of Charles I of England Wikipedia
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