Upstart Crow (TV Series)

Love Is Not Love (2016)

David Mitchell: Will

Quotes 

• Will : And with publishing, kids have instant entertainment in the pockets of their puffling pants. You see them hanging around together hunched over a book of fourteen-line iambic pentameter thumbing away, transfixed like zombies. Not talking to each other. Not interacting socially. Lost to the world. 'Get off your book of sonnets!' cry parents up and down the land, 'you'll develop a hunch!'.

• Will : Poetry helps me deal with these unworthy urges. I grab my trusty nib, my wrist starts to fly and within a few strokes relief pours out of me.

• Will : Now, wife,, please. I am a true and faitfhful husband. No other tufted lady grotto than thine hath given good shelter to the stranger in the purple helm that doth enter upstanding strong but departs a limp and shrunken weakling.

• Will : By Jupiter's hairy armpits, bloody finished!

• Will : A play is but a puff of air, a player's stinking breath doth give it life, but no sooner is it spoke than 'tis lost amid the burps and fartle-barfles of the groundlings. But a published poem lives for ever.

• Will : To gawp or not to gawp... that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to ogle at a coachman squashed under a dead horse... or take arms against the urge to perv and by opposing feel a bit better about oneself.

• Will : Look, I know we've discussed the idea but the more I think about it, the more I see that what is required to convincingly portray a woman on starge is not feminine understanding or girlish insight. It's a squeaky voice, pouty lips and a couple of half coconuts.

  Kate : I just really, really feel that an actual girl would be more convincing. Plus, it's my dream.

  Will : Kate, be realistic. The law states that a woman may not attend university, take a profession, hold public office or own property.

  Marlowe : Men are better than women, by law.

  Will : Exactly. It therefore follows that they must even be better at being women.

  Marlowe : Well, that's just obvious.

• Will : Bottom! I want Bottom!

  Marlowe : Yes, I think that's clear from the first hundred and twenty-six sonnets.

• Will : Now shut thee that which eateth food but grows not fat, speaketh words but be not wise, and burpeth loud but makes not gas!

  Bottom : Bloody hell, Master, just say mouth! People aren't impressed, you know!

• Will Shakespeare : Result! Oh, yeah! Who the bard? Me the bard! Iambic pentameter is my bitch!