Glenda Jackson credited as playing...
Queen Elizabeth I
- Queen Elizabeth I: All my life, I have been shadowed by conspiracy. The axe, the dagger, the block... they are as familiar to me as spring flowers to a countryman. Fears and doubts circle my head like black crows around a corpse. Every time a new treachery is revealed, I am strangely surprised. Foolishly, I expect good in a world where men pursue evil.
- Queen Elizabeth I: I grieve, and dare not show my discontent. I love, and yet I am forced to seem to hate. I do, yet dare not say I ever meant. I seem stark mute, but inwardly I do prate. I am, and not. I freeze, yet am burned since from myself my other self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun... follows me flying, flies when I pursue it. Stand and lies by me, doth what I have done. This too familiar care doth make me rue it, not means I find to rid him from my breast. Til, by the end of things, it be suppressed. O, let me live with some more sweet content. Or die, and so forget what love ere meant.
- Queen Elizabeth I: I want to be young again. I want to have my hopes again. And I want not to feel time... like a dead child in my womb.
- Queen Elizabeth I: I thought that if all other men deserted me, you would not.
- Robert Dudley: I would die for you!
- Queen Elizabeth I: What is that to do with it?
- Queen Elizabeth I: You are welcomed back to court, my Lord. You see? Your policy has triumphed. What advice would you have for me now?
- Robert Dudley: I would not dare to offer you advice, my Queen.
- Queen Elizabeth I: Why not?
- Robert Dudley: The philosophers teach us that beauty is wisdom, and so you are the wisest woman in the world.
- Queen Elizabeth I: You must not speak to me like that. It is not fit. You are a married man, and I... we will deal more honestly with each other from now on.
- [Glares sharply at Dudley]