Quotes

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Queen Elizabeth: You are an eager boy. Did you like the play?

John Webster: I liked it when she stabbed herself, Your Majesty.

Hugh Fennyman: Uh, one moment, sir.

Ned Alleyn: Who are you?

Hugh Fennyman: I'm, uh... I'm the money.

Ned Alleyn: Then you may remain so long as you remain silent.

Lord Wessex: I have spoken with your father.

Viola De Lesseps: So, my lord? I speak with him every day.

Christopher Marlowe: I thought your play was for Burbage.

William Shakespeare: This is a different one.

Christopher Marlowe: A different one you haven't written?

Queen Elizabeth: Mr. Tilney! Have a care with my name - you will wear it out!

Makepeace, the Preacher: [protesting outside The Rose] Licentiousness is made a show! Vanity and pride are likewise made a show! This is the very business of show!

Lord Wessex: I cannot shed blood in her house, but I will cut your throat anon. Do you have a name?

William Shakespeare: Christopher Marlowe, at your service.

Tilney: That woman is a woman!

Viola de Lesseps: [as Thomas Kent] Tell me how you love her, Will.

William Shakespeare: Like a sickness and its cure together.

[on first hearing the tragic ending to Romeo and Juliet]

Philip Henslowe: Well, that would have them rolling in the aisles.

Philip Henslowe: The show must... you know...

William Shakespeare: [prompting him] Go on!

William Shakespeare: I'm done with theater. The playhouse is for dreamers. Look what the dream brought us.

Viola De Lesseps: It was we ourselves did that. And for my life to come, I would not have it otherwise.

[Saying their goodbyes]

William Shakespeare: You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.

William Shakespeare: It is not a comedy I'm writing now.

William Shakespeare: Love knows nothing of rank or river bank.

William Shakespeare: A broad river divides my lovers: family, duty, fate. As unchangeable as nature.

Viola de Lesseps: I would stay asleep my whole life, if I could dream myself into a company of players.

Viola De Lesseps: Good sir? I heard you were a poet. But a poet of no words?

Queen Elizabeth: Fifty pounds! A very worthy sum on a very worthy question. Can a play show us the very truth and nature of love? I bear witness to the wager, and will be the judge of it as occasion arises. I have not seen anything to settle it yet.

Queen Elizabeth: And tell Master Shakespeare, something more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night.

[last lines]

William Shakespeare: My story starts at sea, a perilous voyage to an unknown land. A shipwreck. The wild waters roar and heave. The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces. And all the helpless souls within her drowned. All save one. A lady. Whose soul is greater than the ocean, and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace. Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story. For she will be my heroine for all time. And her name will be Viola.

Philip Henslowe: Let us have pirates, clowns, and a happy ending, or we shall send you back to Stratford to your wife!

Viola De Lesseps: [as Juliet] I do remember well where I should be, and there I am - where is my Romeo?

Nurse: [shouting from the audience] Dead!

Nurse: Lord Wessex was looking at you tonight.

Viola De Lesseps: All the men at court are without poetry. If they see me, they see my father's fortune, I - will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.

Nurse: Not Valentine and Sylvia.

Viola De Lesseps: No! Not the artful postures of love, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love as there has never been in a play. I will have love. Or I will end my days as a...

Nurse: As a nurse?

Viola De Lesseps: Oh, but I will be Valentine and Sylvia too. Oh, good nurse, God save you and good night.

Ned Alleyn: [on learning the fate of his character] He dies?

William Shakespeare: Follow that boat!

First Boatman: Right you are, guv'nor!... I know your face. Are you an actor?

William Shakespeare: [oh God, here we go again] Yes.

First Boatman: Yes, I've seen you in something. That one about a king.

William Shakespeare: Really?

First Boatman: I had that Christopher Marlowe in my boat once.

Queen Elizabeth: Playwrights teach us nothing about love. They make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust, but they cannot make it true.

Viola De Lesseps: Oh, but they can!

Viola de Lesseps: Nurse, as I love you and you love me, you will bind my breast and buy me a boy's wig.

Viola De Lesseps: You have never spoken so well of him before.

William Shakespeare: He was not dead before.

Third Auditioneer: [after every auditioneer has recited "Faustus"] I would like to give you something from "Faustus."

Philip Henslowe: [exasperated] How refreshing!

William Shakespeare: You, sir, are a gentleman.

Ned Alleyn: And you, sir, are a Warwickshire shithouse.

Queen Elizabeth: [to Lord Wessex, about Viola] Have her, then, but you are a lordly fool. She's been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you.

William Shakespeare: I have a wife, yes, and I cannot marry the daughter of Sir Robert De Lesseps. You needed no wife come from Stratford to tell you that, and yet, you let me come to your bed.

Viola De Lesseps: Calf-love. I loved the writer and gave up the prize for a sonnet.

[first title cards]

Title card: London 1593

Title card: In the glory days of the Elizabethan Theatre two playhouses were fighting it out for writers and audiences.

Title card: North of the city was the Curtain Theatre, home to England's most famous actor, Richard Burbage.

Title card: Across the river was the competition, built by Philip Henslowe, a businessman with a cash flow problem...

Title card: ...the Rose...

Christopher Marlowe: His best friend is killed in a duel by Ethel's brother or something. His name is Mercutio.

William Shakespeare: Mercutio... good name.