In an England of the near future, King Magnus holds the last remnants of constitutional influence: the right to speak to his people and the right of veto. His Prime Minister, Joe Proteus, and a Cabinet of squabbling, self-interested ministers have decided that even this much is an affront to democracy. They hand the King an ultimatum — surrender the right to speak and to veto and become a powerless figurehead, or the government resigns.

Magnus does not bluster and does not beg. He draws his ministers out, exposes their vanities, and then springs a trap of devastating simplicity: if he is to be stripped of all power, he will abdicate — and stand as a commoner for election to the very Parliament that unseated him, taking his excellent chance of being returned as a popular Prime Minister himself. The threat detonates the Cabinet's logic, for they have argued that the people are sovereign, and now the King proposes to go to the people. Around this duel Shaw sets a famous comic interlude with the King's mistress Orinthia and the arrival of an American ambassador with an audacious proposal to "reunite" the United States with the British Empire.

First performed in 1929 and published with Shaw's combative preface, The Apple Cart is the mature Shavian comedy of ideas at full stretch: a debate-play in which almost nothing happens and everything is at stake. Beneath the wit lies a serious and durable provocation — that the real contest is not between monarchy and democracy at all, but between both and plutocracy, the rule of concentrated money that quietly buys whatever government the people elect. Shaw, the lifelong socialist, dares the reader to decide who is right.

This edition presents the complete public-domain text of the play in clean, readable typesetting prepared for the modern e-reader, with an editor's biographical note, a guide to further reading, and questions for reflection at the back.