Barnes's play Bewitched (1974) sets his themes of greed, religious superficiality, and the corruption of the ruling elite in the context of seventeenth-century Spain, as King Carlos II tries to beget an heir. Once again, the self-indulgences of those in authority leads to chaos and futility.

The Ruling Class may have been influenced by some of the ideas in Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, a 1939 film that exposes the moral bankruptcy of the French upper class.

Volpone, Ben Jonson's satire about the lengths to which people will go to acquire an inheritance, is arguably the finest comedy of the Jacobean era. The play also illustrates Jonson's influence on Barnes.

Two plays by George Bernard Shaw, whose influence on Barnes is considerable, explore class inequalities and upper class hypocrisy: Major Barbara,Pygmalion,