- Will Shakespeare: I know you long to play the ingénue in my still unfinished teen romance, but girls be banned from acting.
- Kate: But it's so obvious that real girls would be better at playing girls.
- Bottom: Yeah, cos that's just really logical, isn't it?
- Kate: Um, yes!
- Bottom: Maybe you think we should get real kings to play the kings? Or real ancient Romans to play the ancient Romans?
- Kate: Um, that's not quite the same...
- Bottom: Or real witches to play the witches?
- Kate: I get what you are tyring to...
- Bottom: Or a real St. George for St. George and the dragon, and a real dragon! Real armies for the battles, real fairies for the enchanted woods. Theseus and the Minotar? Where are we going to find a minotaur?
- Will Shakespeare: Youre observations, Bottom, are neither here nor there.
- Kate: Is that another one?
- Will Shakespeare: Yes, just invented it. When it comes to language, the world's mine oyster. In fact, I'm so clever I could end up with too much of a good thing.
- Kate: Maybe you should stop now.
- Will Shakespeare: Can't They just pop up all of a sudden but, give the devil his due, there's method in my madness.
- Kate: Really, stop it.
- Will Shakespeare: Why, 'tis a foregone conclusion that they'll leave you bedazzled and in stitches and before long you will be damanding more with bated breath.
- Bottom: The world's your oyster? Why would that be a good thing?
- Will Shakespeare: Tad obscure, er... what the dickens! I'll spoil my spotless reputation. Must be tired, I didn't sleep one wink. If I'm not careful, you'll send me packing on a wild goose chase and I'll vanish into thin air or be dead as a doornail.
- Kate: Stop it. I really mean it. You are very clever, Mr. Shakespeare, but you can be an awful show-off.
- Will Shakespeare: But with a heart of gold.
- Kate: No! Just a show-off.
- Will Shakespeare: Ay, there's the rub.
- Will Shakespeare: So, we're in Padua, right?
- Bottom: Where's that?
- Will Shakespeare: Dunno. Italy I think, but I may have made it up. I left school at fourteen. I don't do geographical detail.
- Kit Marlowe: You should watch that, Will. Centuries after you are gone people may use it to claim you were too thick to have written your own plays.
- Will Shakespeare: Don't be absured, Kit. The, the idea that I never wrote my plays could only appeal to the sort of naive fact-averse fantasists who claims that the monks sacked their own monasteries to make Henry the Eight look bad and that man never walked on the New World.
- Kate: I have invented a new phrase, Mrs. Shakespeare, especially for you.
- Will Shakespeare: Really, Kate, that's very flattering.
- Kate: Yes, it is, for you are strong as if made from chain, exciting like a pageant. You have risen up from nowhere as if a city on water. You are a guiding light and the very heart of a man.
- Will Shakespeare: Your words move me, sweet Kate, but I would fain know their meaning.
- Kate: Why mail is made from chain, a pageant is a show, the city on water be naught but Venice, the light that guides is a star, and the heart of a man is his soul. Put them all together and you get...
- Will Shakespeare: Mail, show, Venice, star, soul.
- Kate: I'll leave it with you.