Coronation of King Charles, The – The Triumph of Universal Harmony

In King Charles the Wise, Nicholas Hagger celebrated Prince Charles’s humanitarian vision and foresaw the birth of a united world. In The Coronation of King Charles he celebrates the coming Carolingian Age. The hope is that all the divisions within the UK and problems of humankind will be resolved under a new democratic World State working to abolish war, enforce disarmament, combat famine, disease and poverty, and solve the world’s environmental and ecological problems of climate change and global warming; and that King Charles, Head of a Commonwealth of 53 nation-states, will work to bring his humanitarian vision to all the world’s nations. Following the tradition of Ben Jonson’s 17th-century court masques in verse and of his own masques The Dream of Europa and King Charles the Wise, which incorporate the blend of mythology and history and five sections (prologue, antimasque, masque, revels and epilogue) found in all masques. Hagger sets the third masque in his trilogy in London's Banqueting House, where masques were performed before James I. This coronation masque contains three pageant entertainments that are viewed by King Charles before his coronation and contrast the disorder and political chaos before his reign with the order and harmony of his new Carolingian Age. His philosopher-King’s concern to benefit the lot of all humankind is applauded by the Universalist God of the One who assumes protean forms - the gods of all faiths including Biblical Israel’s Yahweh and Olympian Zeus - and cares for all creation, and watches over him. King Charles, co-author of Harmony, is shown as presiding over what promises to be an Age of Universal Harmony.

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