King Charles II Quotes in Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950)

King Charles II: You have a galleon of 40 guns. Therefore, we charge you with the personal responsibility of capturing this Captain Blood.

Marquis de Riconete: I shall do everything in my power, Sire. But of course your Majesty realizes that this is no common criminal you send me after. Blood is a learned, intelligent man. A doctor.

King Charles II: A doctor? Are the English so hated that their doctors must turn to piracy for a living?

King Charles II: [at a royal ball] Look at them. My loving subjects. You'd never know that half of them danced in Puritan garb while my father went to the chopping block.

Amber St. Clair: [moved] No wonder you seek solace in amusement, sire.

[slyly]

Amber St. Clair: Can a common trollop help you to forget?

King Charles II: [to his spaniels] Children, children, what distressing behavior.

King Charles II: For her husband I need a man who is far too fond of women in general to love one in particular.

King Charles II: Love was the only thing not asked of you. Indeed it was the only thing expressly forbidden of you.

King Charles II: I thought about putting you in the tower. I even considered putting your head on a spike. But I decided on something worse. I'm going to ignore you. I will no longer encourage any hope in my breast for you. I am condemning you to be you for the rest of your life.

King Charles II: I handed you a chance to show your shining talent and what do you give me in return? A pornographic representation of a royal court where the men only deal in buggery and the women's sole object of interest is the dildo!

Rochester: A monument to your reign!

King Charles II: Your father spirited me out of England when my life was at stake, so I looked after him and after you.

Rochester: You put me in the Tower.

King Charles II: And I let you out. The time has come for you to pay your dues. People listen to you, Johnny. If you took your seat in the Lords, you could make great speeches that would influence events. Anyone can oppose, it's fun to be against things, but there comes a time when you have to start being for things as well.

King Charles II: The most advanced scientific instrument in western Europe. It cost £60,000. It tells the time in every corner of the globe. Understand? That is achievement. The man who did that was not continually pissed for the last three years.

King Charles II: Johnny, you finally did something for me.

Rochester: I didn't do it for you, I did it for me.

King Charles II: When did I banish him?

Royal Advisor: Three months ago.

King Charles II: For how long?

Royal Advisor: A year.

King Charles II: Bring him back. Now.

King Charles II: Elizabeth had her Shakespeare. You could be mine.

King Charles II: Give me a major work of literature and I'll give you 500 guineas.

Rochester: When would you like it? Friday?

King Charles II: I can't get money out of Louis unless I dissolve Parliament, and I can't get money out of Parliament unless I fight Louis.

Rochester: Well, choose.

King Charles II: I need money from both of them.

King Charles II: I'm being pissed on from half-a-dozen directions at once and it don't accord with my majestic dignity.

King Charles II: I could've ignored your poem, Johnny, but I made a fuss about it for a reason; I won't hide anything from you. The country's on the brink, people are still reeling from the fire, the plague, the Catholics are plotting, the Dutch are a bunch of bastards and the French are ten times worse and there's no money. I can only get funds by calling into Parliament or plotting against them, and I don't want to lock antlers with them head on the way my father did.

King Charles II: Why shouldn't we have women on stage? After all, the French have been doing it for years.

Sir Edward Hyde: Whenever we're about to do something truly horrible, we always say that the French have been doing it for years.

King Charles II: My astronomers tell me that a star's light shines on long after it has died, even though it doesn't know it.

King Charles II: Exile is a dreadful thing for one who knows his rightful place.

King Charles II: Act a man, Kynaston. How hard can it be?

Ned Kynaston: It is not a question of acting a man. I can act a man. There's no artistry in that. There are things that I can be as a woman that I cannot be as a man.

King Charles II: Balance the scales, Kynaston. Give the girls a chance.

King Charles II: Kynaston? How in hell did you get in here?

Ned Kynaston: A former fellow actor is your undercook and has long been a dear friend to me.

King Charles II: Then we'll have to execute him.

[Kynaston blanches]

Sir Edward Hyde: [groans] Ohhhh.

King Charles II: [sighs] A joke. A joke. Calm down, Kynaston.

Ned Kynaston: I want to act.

King Charles II: Then act.

Ned Kynaston: I want to act as I did before.

King Charles II: You mean the girls' parts.

Ned Kynaston: If you will.

King Charles II: I won't.