- 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.
- William Shakespeare: You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.
- Viola De Lesseps: Nor you, for me.
- William Shakespeare: Goodbye, my love. A thousand times goodbye.
- Viola De Lesseps: Write me well.
- [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.
- Queen Elizabeth: I know something of a woman in a man's profession. Yes, by God, I do know about that.
- "Thomas Kent": Tell me how you love her, Will.
- William Shakespeare: Like a sickness - and its cure, together.
- "Thomas Kent": Oh, yes. Like rain and sun. Like cold and heat.
- William Shakespeare: Marlowe's touch was in my Titus Andronicus. And my Henry VI was a house built on his foundation.
- Viola De Lesseps: You never spoke so well of him.
- William Shakespeare: He was not dead before.
- Lord Wessex: How is this to end?
- Queen Elizabeth: As stories must when love's denied: with tears and a journey.
- Viola De Lesseps: Master Shakespeare?
- William Shakespeare: The same, alas.
- Viola De Lesseps: Oh, but why "alas"?
- William Shakespeare: A lowly player.
- Viola De Lesseps: Alas indeed, for I thought you the highest poet of my esteem and writer of plays that capture my heart.
- William Shakespeare: Oh - I am him too!
- 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!
- Queen Elizabeth: [after inspecting Viola] Have her then, but you're a lordly fool. She's been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you... it takes a woman to know it.
- Lord Wessex: [angrily] Marlowe!
- Philip Henslowe: Another little problem.
- William Shakespeare: What'll we do now?
- Philip Henslowe: The show must... you know...
- William Shakespeare: Go on?
- 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.
- 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.
- [Whispering at Viola's bedroom door]
- Nurse: My lady, the house is stirring. It is a new day.
- Viola De Lesseps: It is a new WORLD.
- 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.
- Lord Wessex: Is she obedient?
- Sir Robert de Lesseps: As any mule in Christendom - but if you are the man to ride her, there are rubies in the saddlebag.
- Lord Wessex: I like her!
- William Shakespeare: You, sir, are a gentleman.
- Ned Alleyn: And you, sir, are a Warwickshire shithouse.
- Richard Burbage: The Master of the Revels despises us all for vagrants and peddlers of bombast. But my father, James Burbage, had the first license to make a company of players from Her Majesty, and he drew from poets the literature of the age. We must show them that we are men of parts. Will Shakespeare has a play. I have a theatre. The Curtain is yours.
- [after sex]
- Viola De Lesseps: I would not have thought it: there IS something better than a play!
- William Shakespeare: There is.
- Viola De Lesseps: Even your play.
- William Shakespeare: Hmm?
- Viola De Lesseps: And that was only my first try.
- Viola De Lesseps: I loved a writer and gave up the prize for a sonnet.
- William Shakespeare: I was the more deceived.
- Viola De Lesseps: Yes, you were deceived, for I did not know how much I loved you.
- 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!
- [first lines]
- Philip Henslowe: [screams in pain]
- Hugh Fennyman: Henslowe! Do you know what happens to a man who doesn't pay his debts? His boots catch fire!
- Philip Henslowe: [screams]
- Hugh Fennyman: Why do you howl when it is I who am bitten?
- 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.
- William Shakespeare: Love knows nothing of rank, or riverbank. It will spark between a Queen and the poor vagabond who plays the King - and their love should be minded by each, for love denied blights the soul we owe to God.
- Queen Elizabeth: You are an eager boy. Did you like the play?
- John Webster: I liked it when she stabbed herself, Your Majesty.
- Lord Wessex: I have spoken with your father.
- Viola De Lesseps: So, my lord? I speak with him every day.
- Viola de Lesseps: The Queen commands a comedy, Will. The Twelfth Night.
- William Shakespeare: A comedy. What would my hero be? The saddest wretch in all the kingdom - to suit with love?
- Viola de Lesseps: It's a beginning. Let him be - a duke. And your heroine...
- William Shakespeare: Sold in marriage! And half-way to America.
- William Shakespeare: At sea then, a voyage to a new world.
- Viola de Lesseps: A storm. All are lost.
- Viola de Lesseps: She lands on a vast and empty shore. She's brought to the duke... Orsino.
- William Shakespeare: Orsino... good name.
- Viola de Lesseps: But, fearful of her virtue, she comes to him dressed as a boy.
- William Shakespeare: And thus is unable to declare her love.
- Viola de Lesseps: But, all ends well.
- William Shakespeare: How does it?
- Viola de Lesseps: I don't know. It's a mystery.
- William Shakespeare: His name is Mercutio.
- Ned Alleyn: What's the name of the play?
- William Shakespeare: Mercutio.
- Philip Henslowe: It is?
- William Shakespeare: Shh!
- Philip Henslowe: Will! Where is my play? Tell me you have it nearly done! Tell me you have it started.
- [desperately]
- Philip Henslowe: You have begun?
- William Shakespeare: [struggling with his boots] Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move.
- Philip Henslowe: No, no, we haven't the time. Talk prose.
- Hugh Fennyman: How much is that, Mr Frees?
- Frees: Twenty pounds to the penny, Mr. Fennyman.
- Hugh Fennyman: Correct.
- Philip Henslowe: But I have to pay the actors and the author.
- Hugh Fennyman: Share of the profits.
- Philip Henslowe: There's never any.
- Hugh Fennyman: Of course not.
- Philip Henslowe: Oh, oh, Mr. Fennyman. I think you might have hit upon something.
- 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: It's as if my quill is broken... as if the organ of my imagination has dried up... as if the proud tower of my genius has collapsed.
- Dr. Moth: Interesting.
- William Shakespeare: Nothing comes.
- Dr. Moth: Most interesting.
- William Shakespeare: It's like trying to pick a lock with a wet herring.
- Dr. Moth: Tell me, are you lately humbled in the act of love? How long has it been?
- William Shakespeare: Wait! You're still a maid. And perhaps have mistooken me as I was mistook on Thomas Kent.
- Viola De Lesseps: Are you the author of the plays of William Shakespeare?
- William Shakespeare: I am.
- Viola De Lesseps: Then kiss me again for I am not mistook.
- [about Marlowe's death in a tavern]
- Ned Alleyn: A quarrel about the bill.
- Philip Henslowe: The bill! Ah, vanity, vanity!
- Ned Alleyn: Not the billing - the BILL!
- Viola de Lesseps: Nurse, as I love you and you love me, you will bind my breast and buy me a boy's wig.
- 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.
- [on first hearing the tragic ending to Romeo and Juliet]
- Philip Henslowe: Well, that would have them rolling in the aisles.
- William Shakespeare: A broad river divides my lovers: family, duty, fate. As unchangeable as nature.
- William Shakespeare: You see? The comsumptives plot against me. "Will Shakespeare has a play, let us go and cough through it."
- 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.
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