- Tony Palmer: You know what this country has become? Once we had a church built upon a rock. Now the rock has been bulldozed and with it our faith. What we're left with is a crawling underside of expediency and dishonour beholden to Brussels wherein the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain. England, my England, is shuffling about like an old tramp begging for a pair of boots at the tradesmen's entrances of Europe.
- John Dryden: No government has ever been or ever can be wherein timeservers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons only are changed: the same juggling in the state, the same hypocrisy in religion, the same self-interest and mismanagement will remain, forever.
- Dr. Spratt: You will give all the money to Mr. Needham, sir, or in default you will lose your place, Master Purcell!
- Barbara Palmer (Lady Castlemaine): [about the play Palmer is writing] Anything in it for me?
- Tony Palmer: I wouldn't think so. It's about genius.
- Charles II: How much?
- Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon: 11 pounds, 2 shillings, and ten pence, the total in the exchequer, your majesty. And the national debt, in excess of... 3 million, your majesty.
- Charles II: [thinking of his musicians] I cannot pay them. Why they do it, I cannot think. Why they play on, sing on, they do. I cannot pay my sailors. I cannot pay my guard, but they are rogues, they pay themselves. But the players, the singers, the dancers. We must find a way Edward to pay them. Chapel Royale...
- Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon: Bankers were a tribe grew up in Cromwell's time. Never were heard of before.
- Charles II: They've come to stay, I fear.
- Captain Henry Cooke: L, Captain Henry Cooke, say it as Master of the Children of the Royal Chapel... you, Harry Purcell, are destined... do you but stay obedient and compliant and do better with your viol... and your fingering
- Young Harry: I hate the viol!
- Captain Henry Cooke: Its use is to strengthen a part, to support the voices. A chest of viols is essential in church when the people cannot sing in tune
- Young Harry: I would always have my people sing in tune, and rest the voices, and then use my violins.
- Captain Henry Cooke: What can a fiddle say alongside a generous heroic viol, except it should not come among them'? Fingering, fingering, Harry! Fret and finger, or we shall banish cornets with voices now we have 'em, to the Glory of God and the King and to... I shall say it... to Prosperity!
- [all of the boys cheer]
- Captain Henry Cooke: This is a music factory. But make people feel, Master Purcell. Give them lessons in feeling. Let 'em think afterwards. Now in some countries this might be thought a dangerous approach.
- Charles II: 40,000 or so... or so... Yes, let's say £40,000, Master Kiffin, is the sum which, were you to offer in loan would make us so grateful it should advance ye... .
- Kiffen: Majesty, uttter honour, sire, Death, I swear it! But rather I would give ye this day... give ye... £10,000, give ye!
- Charles II: And you shall, Master Kiffin, for Love hath greater power and less mercy than Fate.
- Kiffen: [walking away from the King] Joy! I am saved 30,000. Saved 30,000!
- Tony Palmer: Once, our native language was refined and free, like the old liturgy ofthe Anglican Church, or Pepys, Dryden, Purcell, each of whom tried to find a vibrant language in which it was possible only to tell the truth.