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Queen Anne: Some wounds do not close; I have many such. One just walks around with them and sometimes one can feel them filling with blood.
-
Queen Anne: Did you just look at me?
[the servant shakes his head sideways]
Queen Anne: Did you? Look at me! Look at me!
[the servant looks at her]
Queen Anne: How dare you! Close your eyes!
-
[repeated line]
Queen Anne: Rub my legs.
-
Queen Anne: [after her fall] They were all staring, weren't they? I can tell even if I can't see. And I heard the word fat! Fat and ugly!
Lady Sarah: Anne, no one but me would dare and I did not.
-
Lady Sarah: [to Queen Anne] You look like a badger.
-
Abigail: Lady Marlborough.
Lady Sarah: Oh, dear. The servant is dressed in the clothes of a lady. How... whimsical.
Abigail: My dear friend and cousin, how good to see you've returned from...
Lady Sarah: Hell. I'm sure you shall pass through it one day.
-
Abigail: As it turns out, I'm capable of much unpleasantness.
-
Godolphin: Obviously you have chosen to keep the particulars of your dismissal from me. I shall leave a gap in the conversation for you to remedy that.
[silence and dead stares from Lady Sarah]
Godolphin: I do not know of women and their feelings, but I know they nurse their hurts like wailing newborns.
Lady Sarah: Godolphin, I have a surge of desire to see your nose broken. Your point?
-
Lady Sarah: Sometimes a lady likes to have some fun.
-
Harley: Must the duck be here?
Godolphin: Fastest duck in the city. Horatio is a prize worth stealing, he does not leave my side.
Harley: Keep him away from me or I will pull his liver out and eat it with a cornichon.
-
Lady Sarah: Let's shoot something!
-
Harley: I wish to make a statement to the Queen.
Lady Sarah: State it to me. I love a comedy. Is there cake?
-
Lady Sarah: Abigail has done this. She does not love you.
Queen Anne: Because how could anyone? She wants nothing from me. Unlike you.
Lady Sarah: She wants nothing from you. And yet somehow she is a lady. With 2000 a year, and Harley sits on your knee most nights.
Queen Anne: I wish you could love me as she does!
Lady Sarah: You wish me to lie to you? "Oh you look like an angel fallen from heaven, your majesty." No. Sometimes, you look like a badger. And you can rely on me to tell you.
Queen Anne: Why?
Lady Sarah: Because I will not lie! That is love!
-
Lady Sarah: [to Abigail] If you do not go, I will start kicking you and I will not stop.
-
Lady Sarah: Mrs Meg, your cream bill is outrageous. Are you bathing in it to help your hemorrhoids?
-
Lady Sarah: [to Harley] Your mascara is running. If you want to fix yourself we can discuss this later.
-
Abigail: [about the war] If he dies?
Lady Sarah: Did you not sacrifice your cunt to a fatty German to save your father?
Abigail: Yes.
Lady Sarah: There is always a price to pay. I am prepared to pay it.
-
Lady Sarah: None for the queen.
Queen Anne: What?
Lady Sarah: Well you cannot have hot chocolate. Your stomach, the sugar inflames it.
Queen Anne: Abigail, hand me that cup!
Lady Sarah: [casually] Do not.
Abigail: I'm sorry. I do not know what to do.
Lady Sarah: Oh fine, give it to her. And you can get a bucket and mop for the aftermath.
-
Abigail: You're so beautiful.
Queen Anne: Stop it, you mock me.
Abigail: I do not. If I were a man, I would ravish you! Rrrrravish!
-
Lady Sarah: Anne, you are too sensitive.
Queen Anne: And you are too mean and uncaring, some days.
Lady Sarah: Some days I'm quite lovely though. Let's think on them!
-
Queen Anne: Oh it is fun to be queen sometimes!
Harley: One can only imagine.
-
Abigail: [after Sarah slaps Abigail twice in the face] Obviously you still have some anger to expiate. I'll allow it this once.
Lady Sarah: Congratulations on your wedded bliss.
Abigail: [snorts dismissively]
-
Lady Sarah: There are limits to what one can give.
-
[last lines]
Abigail: You should lie down.
Queen Anne: You shall speak when asked to! I feel dizzy, I need to hold on to something.
[she grabs Abigail's hair]
-
Lady Sarah: You do not lisp but you are mad. Giving me a palace?
Queen Anne: I have been wanting to give you something for quite some time now. Seemed like the perfect opportunity with Marlborough winning.
Lady Sarah: It is a monstrous extravagance, Mrs. Morley. We are at war.
Queen Anne: We won!
Lady Sarah: Oh, it is not over. We must continue.
Queen Anne: Oh. Oh, I did not know that.
-
Harley: Might I remind you, you are not the queen.
Lady Sarah: No, she has sent me to speak for her. She is unwell.
Godolphin: What says she?
Lady Sarah: That Harley is a fop and a prat and smells like a ninety-six-year-old French whore's vajuju.
-
Godolphin: A man's dignity is the one thing that holds him back from running amok.
-
Harley: You are in favour. But favour is a breeze that shifts direction all the time.
-
Abigail: Have you come to seduce me, or rape me?
Masham: I am a gentleman.
Abigail: So, rape then.
-
Queen Anne: I like it when she puts her tongue inside me.
-
Abigail: My life is like a maze that I continually think I've gotten out of only to find another corner right in front of me.
-
Lady Sarah: Where am I?
Mae: You're in heaven. That's God. You'll meet him later.
-
Lady Sarah: If you offer me tea, you will forgive me if I don't accept.
-
Abigail: [referring to the filth she fell into that's all over her clothes and face] This mud stinks.
Sally: They shit in the streets around here. Political commentary they call it.
-
Harley: It is important to make new friends, is it not?
Abigail: Yes. If that's what's actually happening here, and not veiled threats under the guise of civility.
-
Harley: So what's been happening?
Abigail: The queen and Lady Marlborough are to race lobsters, and then eat them.
Harley: Do you want to get punched?
-
Harley: [after he pushes Abigail down] Are you all right?
-
[first lines]
Queen Anne: How was my speech?
Lady Sarah: You were brilliant.
Queen Anne: Did I lisp?
Lady Sarah: You don't lisp.
Queen Anne: I know. That was what was so troubling about it. The thought that I suddenly did.
-
Abigail: When I was 15, my father lost me in a card game.
Lady Sarah: You are not serious.
Abigail: He was very upset about it. Took off into the forest with nothing but a scullery maid and a dozen bottles for solace.
-
Queen Anne: What happened to your dress?
Abigail: Wolves.
-
Lady Sarah: I love you, but that I will not do.
Queen Anne: If you love me...
Lady Sarah: Love has limits.
Queen Anne: It should not.
-
Abigail: I hoped I might be employed here. By you. As something.
Lady Sarah: A monster for the children to play with, perhaps?
-
Masham: I am as hard as a rock, and it is our wedding night.
-
Abigail: Can I ask you something?
Lady Sarah: As long as you're aware that I have a gun.
-
Sally: Mrs. Meg says you are to scrub the floor until she can see her toothless fat face in it.
-
Abigail: Shall I tell the doctor you imperiled the Queens health and let you rue the ramifications?
Footman #1: What does - what does rami-fi-ca...
Abigail: It means he will have you whipped.
-
Mrs Meg: What's going on? Do her in the barn if that is what is, not in my kitchen.
-
Lady Sarah: I liked your father, he had charm to burn.
-
Abigail: The debt was to a balloon shaped German man with a thin cock. Thankfully I managed to convince him a woman has her blood in twenty eight days a month.
-
Lady Sarah: Earl Stratford, do not come near me whining today or I will crush your tiny heart to liver.
-
Lady Sarah: Would you like a bite of my new maid before you leave?
-
Lady Sarah: I had a dream that this very small Frenchman covered in blood, was carrying his head around feeding it brie.
-
Masham: That was you on the horse that morning.
Abigail: I am a servant. Where would I get a horse? Perhaps you dreamt of me?
Masham: Perhaps it was you - and I should have you stripped and whipped.
Abigail: I'm waiting.
-
Harley: Going to ride that one are we?
Masham: She does make my blood hot.
-
Abigail: You want something. To fuck me?
Harley: I will leave that to my friend Masham, who is completely cuntstruck by you.
-
Harley: You are in favour. But favour is a breeze that shifts direction all the time. Then in an instant you're back sleeping with a bunch of scabrous whores wondering whose finger's in your arse. You cannot have too many friends in court. I need a friend Abigail, one with cute ears and wide eyes. I am often blind-sided by the distorted situation at court.
-
Queen Anne: Are the people really angry about the land tax?
Lady Sarah: They'll be angrier when the French are sodomising their wives and planting their fields with garlic.
-
Lady Sarah: I am not food! You cannot just eat and eat!
Queen Anne: And yet you are tasty and salty.
-
Masham: Who are you? No ordinary maid.
Abigail: It could be said I have fallen far.
Masham: It could be said I aim to catch you.
Abigail: I might allow it.
-
Masham: This wig is ridiculous.
Harley: A man must look pretty.
-
Abigail: I guess all the rapes were the hardest. Made me feel at their mercy, that I was nothing.
-
Abigail: Mr Harley. You always unbalance me.
-
Abigail: I have just now decided to marry you Masham.
Masham: I cannot marry a servant. I can enjoy one though.
-
Lady Sarah: You are dismissed from my service. Go back to Mrs Meg tell her to find you a position in the scullery. And if she asks why, tell her 'Because I am a disloyal little bitch'.
-
Queen Anne: She is my servant, she is not dismissed. I have made her my Maid of the Bedchamber.
-
Queen Anne: [in a mud bath] It is so strange to be in this.
Abigail: It is good for you. The doctor says it will leach the toxins.
Queen Anne: What if I should fall asleep and slip under?
Abigail: Oh, just imagine it is hot chocolate.
Queen Anne: Oh, then I shall die happy.
-
Queen Anne: You are a dear Abigail. I shall retire for the evening.
Abigail: Shall I prepare your bed Queen Anne?
Lady Sarah: Or shall you and I adjourn to your apartments for sherry?
-
Abigail: Perhaps because of my past, perhaps some malformation of my heart. I blame my father, of course. *Cunt*. I must take control of my circumstance. I will need to act in a way that meets the edges of my morality. Or, I will end up on the street selling my arsehole to syphilitic soldiers, steadfast morality will be a fucking nonsense that will mock me daily.
-
Queen Anne: We should ask people. Get some people in from the villages and ask them.
Lady Sarah: That is not how matters of state are dealt with. People are led, they do not lead.
-
Harley: You do not care? I thought you were on our side.
Abigail: I'm on my side. Always.
-
Abigail: You do not need me as an enemy. As it turns out I am capable of much unpleasantness.
-
Queen Anne: I think she means to vex me.
-
Abigail: Is it a bit like going late to a party? If the party's going well, they did not need you and resent the intrusion. But, if it is going badly, you cannot save it and you tend to regret you ever put on your nice gown for it.
-
Lady Sarah: Is my horse alive or did you eat it?
Mae: I sold it.
-
Lady Sarah: How goes the Kingdom?
-
Mae: You still owe me though. You can suck for your supper from now on. I'll take twenty percent. You seem posh, gents will like that.
-
Lady Sarah: She is a viper.
-
Lady Sarah: I started looking over some of the many, many, many letters you've written to me. 'I long for your embrace', 'I long for the heat from your naked body on mine.' It's very intense. Very - explicit. I thought I'd misplaced some of them the other day. It was quite a fright. What if say that son of a bitch Jonathan Swift got his hands on them? In his newspaper the next day? You would be ruined.
Queen Anne: You would never.
Lady Sarah: You have no idea what I would do for my country.
-
Lady Sarah: Oh, my God. You actually think you have won.
Abigail: Haven't I?
Lady Sarah: We were playing very different games.
Abigail: Well, all I know is, your carriage awaits and my maid is on her way up with something called a pineapple.
-
Harley: A new era of peace and prosperity. A new day. A door to a new future. As metaphors abound.
-
Queen Anne: I do not like this, you will lodge this unknowable thing in my brain and it will eat me with horrible possibilities.
-
Abigail: Fuuuck! Fuck! Fuck. Fuck.
The Favourite Quotes
Extended Reading
