Charles turns to the Bard again

CHARLES once again turned to Shakespeare for a poignant tribute to his late mother, describing her as ‘a pattern to all princes living’.

After MPs and peers had expressed their condolences, the King said their addresses ‘touchingly encompass what our late sovereign, my beloved mother the Queen, meant to us all’.

He added: ‘As Shakespeare says of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was “a pattern to all princes living”.’

This is a reference to the final scene of the play Henry VIII, in which Archbishop Cranmer baptises baby Elizabeth and prophesises she will become a great Queen. Charles quoted from Hamlet in his first broadcast as King on Friday.