Tom Hardy credited as playing...
Robert Dudley • Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester
- Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester: Hadn't you as a child vowed never to take a husband? Dear God, after what happened to your mother, who can blame you? Would you forego a chance at motherhood, Bess, for the sake of a childish vow?
- Queen Elizabeth I: It's not only men who can be corrupted by power. An heir can be as much a threat as a comfort in that.
- Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester: But the love of a man is hardly that of a child.
- Queen Elizabeth I: It can be as fickle.
- Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester: As can a woman's.
- Queen Elizabeth I: But a woman ruler is not as other women, is she? Like the coin that bears her image there are two sides to her. On the one, she embodies the feminine frailty of her sex, and on the other she is the body politic ordained by God.
- Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester: Well, then, it is to the frail and feminine one I must appeal.
- Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester: If I am exiled they will see it as proof of my guilt, I'm done for!
- [Elizabeth is unmoved]
- Robert Dudley - Earl of Leicester: All these months you kept me close you were using me. Playing with me for your own callous ends as you do all men! So long as I was married you were safe, and now I am free you spurn me! If I leave I won't return, Bess. It will be the last time you ever see me.
- Queen Elizabeth I: [He turns to leave] I will have but one mistress here, and no master! Do you hear me? I will have no man rule over me!