Shakespeare in Love Monologues

The world's greatest ever playwright, William Shakespeare, is young, out of ideas and short of cash, but meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.

You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.

Goodbye, my love. A thousand times goodbye.

Like a sickness - and its cure, together.

Marlowe's touch was in my Titus Andronicus. And my Henry VI was a house built on his foundation.

He was not dead before.

Can you love a fool?

I'm done with theater. The playhouse is for dreamers. Look what the dream brought us.

Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move.

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.

A broad river divides my lovers: family, duty, fate. As unchangeable as nature.

You see? The comsumptives plot against me. "Will Shakespeare has a play, let us go and cough through it."

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.

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.

Love knows nothing of rank or river bank.

Love denied blights the soul we owe to God.

It is not a comedy I'm writing now.

You still owe me for One Gentleman of Verona.

Words, words, words. Once I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empires. Love that binds two hearts together come hellfire and brimstone. For six pence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But, now?

Henslowe, you have no soul; so, how can you understand the emptiness that seeks a soulmate?

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.