Lion in Winter

Eleanor:
In a world where carpenters get resurrected, everything is possible.

Henry II:
Now see here, boy...

Philip II:
I am a king - I am no man's "boy"!

Henry II:
A king? Because you put your ass on purple cushions?

Eleanor:
My, what a lovely girl. How could her king have left her?

Eleanor:
You don't dare go!

Henry II:
Say that again at noon, you'll say it to my horse's ass! Lamb, I'll be rid of you by Easter: you can count your reign in days!

Prince John:
Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!

Prince Richard:
Let's strike a flint and see.

Henry II:
The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.

Prince Geoffrey:
If you're a prince, there's hope for every ape in Africa.

Eleanor:
I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade. How's that for blasphemy. I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn... but the troops were dazzled.

Henry II:
I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor:
At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

Henry II:
Oh God, but I do love being king!

Eleanor:
You look fit. War agrees with you. I keep informed; I follow all your slaughters from a distance. Do sit down.

Prince Richard:
Is this an audience... a good night hug with kisses... or an ambush?

Eleanor:
Let's hope it's a reunion.

Henry II:
I want to reach a settlement. I left you with too little earlier,

Philip II:
Yes, nothing is too little.

Henry II:
You know me well enough to know I can't be stopped.

Eleanor:
I don't have to stop you - I have only to delay you. Every enemy you have has friends in Rome... will cost you time.

Henry II:
What is this? I'm not mouldering - my pate's not peeling off. I'm good for years.

Eleanor:
How many years? Suppose I hold you back for one? I can - it's possible. Suppose your first son dies? Ours did - it's possible. Suppose you're daughtered next? We were - that, too, is possible. How old is "Daddy" then? What kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things will you beget?

Henry II:
It's sweet of you to care.

Eleanor:
And when you die - which is regrettable, but necessary - what will happen to frail Alais and her pleumy prince? You can't think Richard's going to wait for your grotesque to grow.

Henry II:
You wouldn't let him do a thing like that.

Eleanor:
Let him? I'd push him through the nursery door!

Henry II:
You're not that cruel.

Eleanor:
Don't fret. We'll wait until you're dead to do it.

Henry II:
We're in the cellar and you're going back to prison and my life is wasted and we've lost each other... and you're smiling.

Eleanor:
It's the way I register despair. There's everything in life but hope.

Henry II:
We're both alive... and for all I know that's what hope is.

Henry II:
We're off to Rome to see the Pope.

Princess Alais:
He's excommunicated you again.

Henry II:
When I bellow, bellow back.

Henry II:
When the king is off his ass, nobody sleeps!

Henry II:
Where's a priest? Somebody fetch me a priest! YOU! Fetch me a bishop!

Prince Richard:
You're so deceitful you can't ask for water when you're thirsty. We could tangle spiders in the webs you weave.

Princess Alais:
Kings, queens, knights everywhere you look and I'm the only pawn. I haven't got a thing to lose - that makes me dangerous.

Henry II:
I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once.

Henry II:
I found out the way your mind works and the kind of man you are. I know your plans and expectations - you've burbled every bit of strategy you've got. I know exactly what you will do, and exactly what you won't, and I've told you exactly nothing. To these aged eyes, boy, that's what winning looks like!

Henry II:
I'm villifying you for God's sake - pay attention!

Eleanor:
I could peel you like a pear and God himself would call it justice!

Henry II:
Well I'm off.

Eleanor:
To Rome?

Henry II:
That's where they keep the Pope!

Eleanor:
What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?

Henry II:
Give me a little peace.

Eleanor:
A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought.

Henry II:
I haven't kept the Great B*tch in the keep for ten years out of passionate attachment.

Eleanor:
Well, that's the way deals are made. We've got him if we want him. He'll sell us all, you know... but only if he thinks we think he won't.

Henry II:
The Vexin's mine.

Philip II:
By what authority?

Henry II:
It's got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.

Henry II:
The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.

Eleanor:
There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.

Eleanor:
Henry's bed is Henry's province, he can people it with sheep for all I care... which on occasion he has done.

Prince Richard:
So! The royal corkscrew finds ME twisted?

Prince John:
A knife! He's got a knife!

Eleanor:
Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.

Eleanor:
You're not an assassin.

Prince Richard:
Look again.

Henry II:
More Brandy wine? They were boiling it in Ireland before the snakes left!

Eleanor:
What family doesn't have its ups and downs?

Prince Geoffrey:
I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it.

Prince Geoffrey:
We're a knowledgeable family.

Henry II:
I'm 50 now. Good God, boy, I'm the oldest man I know! I've got a decade on the pope!

Prince Richard:
I never heard a corpse complain of how it got so cold.

Eleanor:
How dear of you to let me out of prison.

Henry II:
It's only for the holidays.

Henry II:
I want no women in my life.

Princess Alais:
You're tired.

Henry II:
I could have conquered Europe - all of it - but I had women in my life.

Prince John:
You stink. You're a stinker and you stink.

Eleanor:
Henry

Henry II:
Madam

Eleanor:
Did you ever love me?

Henry II:
No

Eleanor:
Good. That will make this pleasanter.

Eleanor:
Henry?

Henry II:
Hmmm?

Eleanor:
I have a confession.

Henry II:
Yes?

Eleanor:
I don't much like our children!

Henry II:
HA! What shall we hang... the holly, or each other?

Philip II:
"What If" is a game for scholars.

Eleanor:
He had a mind like Aristotle and a form like mortal sin.

Henry II:
Who's to say it's monstrous? I'm the King. I call it just. Therefore, I, Henry, by the Grace of God King of the English, Lord of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, Count of Anjou, Brittany, Poitou and Normandy, Maine, Gascony, and Acquitaine, do sentence you to death. Done this Christmas Day in Chinon in God's year eleven eighty-three.

Eleanor:
If you're broken it's because you're brittle... I've lost you, and I can't ever have you back.

Henry II:
My finest angle. It's on all the coins.

Henry II:
Come for me!

Henry II:
I hope we never die.

Eleanor:
So do I.

Henry II:
Do you think there's any chance of it?

Prince John:
I thought I'd come and gloat a little.

Eleanor:
Mother's tired. Come stick pins tomorrow morning; I'll be more responsive.

Prince John:
It's no fun goading anyone tonight.

Eleanor:
I adored you. I still do.

Henry II:
Of all the lies you've told, that is the most terrible.

Eleanor:
I know. That's why I've saved it up until now.

Henry II:
It's heavy... Oh Eleanor, you've brought me my tombstone! You spoil me!

When the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them.

Richard:
He's here. He'll get no satisfaction out of us. Don't let him see you beg...Take it like a man!

Geoffrey:
You fool! As if the way one falls down matters!

Richard:
Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal.

Eleanore [to her jewelry]:
I'd hang you from the nipples, but you'd shock the children.

Eleanor:
I prayed that she'd drop dead and smiled a little when she did.

Eleanor:
It happens in the best of families.