The King and Queen watched moving performances from Shakespeare’s plays as they marked the Bard’s contribution to the life and culture of the nation with celebrated actors.

Charles and Camilla were treated to extracts from some of the most famous scenes in the English language but the performers later joked they were more nervous of “acting royalty” in the audience than Charles and his wife.

Celebrations are being staged this year to mark the 400th anniversary of the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s collection of plays, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio.

It was first published in 1623, about seven years after the playwright’s death, and is considered one of the most influential books ever written in the English language.

Among the guests at the Windsor Castle event were some of the country’s leading actors, including Dame Judi Dench and Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson, and David Oyelowo.

Taking to the stage to read extracts from Macbeth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Antony And Cleopatra and The Tempest was a small ensemble of actors, including Ray Fearon, a former Coronation Street star, Lucy Phelps, Sir Simon Russell Beale and Dame Harriet Walter.

After the performance, Phelps joked the issue was the “acting royalty“ in the first few rows, not Charles and Camilla, who were joined by the Duchess of Edinburgh.

She said: “I thought it was going to be a bit like Strictly (Come Dancing) with Judi Dench holding up a card with a number seven on it.

“Just with all those actors in the room with us who have played those parts, that was the thing.”

On display in a nearby room was a black and white photograph of Charles in costume, holding a dagger, in the lead role of Macbeth, from a November 1965 production staged while he was at Gordonstoun School.

A copy of the First Folio was on an adjoining table, a prized procession of the royal library at Windsor Castle, and Charles and Camilla looked at the rare manuscript after the performance.

If Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell had not compiled the collection, literary experts believe that around half of his plays, including some of his most popular works such as Macbeth, Twelfth Night and As You Like It, would have been lost.

His works have been a touchstone for many in the creative arts over the centuries, and words attributed to Shakespeare by scholars include: critic, zany and obscene from Love’s Labour’s Lost; fashionable from Troilus And Cressida; gossip in The Comedy Of Errors; and rant from Hamlet.

Speaking afterwards, Dame Harriet, 72, said: “I feel very lucky that our King and Queen are lovers of Shakespeare because it’s my big love, it was a really great feeling.”

She said about Charles and Camilla sat in the front row: “I felt there was total appreciation and familiarity, the room was silent and they were listening and laughing at the nuances. It was a very rewarding audience.

“It is important to realise how very close we came to not having it (the First Folio). I can’t imagine a world without Shakespeare.”