Gwyneth Paltrow credited as playing...
Viola De Lesseps
- 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.
- "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.
- 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!
- 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.
- [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.
- [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!
- 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: 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.
- 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.