- Veronica Franco: I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one... I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience... I confess I find more ecstacy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess - I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips, his hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... . Such surrender has been mine. I confess I hunger still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, always, this is mine... If this had not been mine - if I had lived any other way - a child to her husband's whim, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love. I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out... You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give but cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift: our selves, our yearning, our need to love - you call it filth and sin and heresy... I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.
- Beatrice Venier: Do you know what my daughter's nurse told her today? "In a girl's voice lies temptation - a known fact. Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body." She doesn't believe it yet, but she will. She'll grow up just like her mother. Marry, raise children and honor her family. Spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the day she was born a girl. And when she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and Country for no biblical hell could ever be worse than a state of perpetual inconsequence.
- Giulia De Lezze: Go on, ask her. Ask her what you're longing to. Ask her what draws our husbands back to her - again and again - like pigs to a trough!
- Veronica Franco: [peeling a banana] The Latin for banana is arienna. Banana tree is pala.
- [swallows the banana whole, as the wives look on shocked]
- Veronica Franco: A woman's greatest, and most hard-won asset - is an education.
- Giulia De Lezze: Just because you can say it in Latin doesn't make it any less obscene.
- Veronica Franco: Just because you took a vow doesn't mean you know how to love.
- Veronica Franco: Why, Marco Venier, I do believe you're jealous.
- Marco Venier: One could only be jealous of what one cannot have.
- Veronica Franco: And you cannot have me.
- Marco Venier: There's not a woman in Venice I can't have.
- Veronica Franco: And there's not a man in Venice that I can't have.
- Veronica Franco: You... all of you... you who hunger so for what I give, but cannot bear to see such power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift... ourselves, our yearning, our need to love... you call it filth and sin and heresy.
- Domenico Venier: If I didn't know you better I'd think you have the feigned indifference of a man in love. Go on son. Tell the truth and shame the devil.
- Paola Franco: [standing next to a young nude man] If you touch - here.
- Veronica Franco: Amazing.
- Paola Franco: Use your fingers lightly, like feathers. Then harder. Your tongue, like licking sweets. Your teeth with restraint. Just enough - to keep him wanting more. It's wanting - that keeps us alive.
- Marco Venier: You must save yourself.
- Veronica Franco: How?
- Marco Venier: Confess... whatever foolishness they put before you...
- Veronica Franco: That I am a witch?
- Marco Venier: What does it matter what you say to these hypocrites?
- Veronica Franco: I would be saying it.
- Marco Venier: There is no honor with fools like these. God will forgive you.
- Veronica Franco: Marco, if I give them my lie, I give them my soul. I'll lose everything I ever was. My love, my words, my heart.
- Marco Venier: Yes, but you would live.
- Veronica Franco: As someone else.
- Maffio Venier: May sing, and rhyme, and more. Still, is at best a slut, With every horny mutt! You pride yourself on arts and letters, and fucking best your manly betters!
- Veronica Franco: I save the goodly wives of Venice from their husbands' lustful menace!
- Maffio Venier: You compel sacred love to garner riches. What is this if not witchcraft?
- Veronica Franco: No!
- Maffio Venier: No? Did you ever give yourself to a man who could not pay your fee?
- Veronica Franco: I gave my heart where riches were no use.
- Maffio Venier: Answer the question!
- Veronica Franco: I did what was necessary to live!
- Maffio Venier: Did you ever give yourself to a man who could not pay your fee?
- Veronica Franco: What other profession will you allow me? How shall I survive if I cannot marry?
- Bolognetti: You will answer the question!
- Veronica Franco: Why, when you are determined to damn me whatever. I say?
- Maffio Venier: Personally, I didn't think Uncle was still capable of getting it up. What did you do to him to get him to publish this little of ditties.
- Marco Venier: She worked for it.
- Maffio Venier: Ha, I bet she did. How much do you cost these days Veronica?
- Veronica Franco: If your prick is as limp as your verse, no price can buy time enough.
- Veronica Franco: I think you mistake me for one of your easy court companions?
- Marco Venier: No, no I mistook the asking in your eyes.
- Marco Venier: Do you not like my kiss?
- Veronica Franco: I wish it were not a sin to have liked it so.
- Marco Venier: God made sin, though we might know his mercy.
- Marco Venier: I'm getting married Veronica. Congratulate me.
- Veronica Franco: Felicitations on your grand match.
- Veronica Franco: My people are true citizens 700 years back.
- Marco Venier: A coat of arms does not an inheritance make.
- Veronica Franco: I confess I *fuck* divinely those who love and well opine me.
- Maffio Venier: [mocking her] I confess I fuck divinely, Those who richly wine and dine me
- Veronica Franco: Recant the curse you give my kind. Admit I have, as you, a heart and mind.
- Maffio Venier: A greedy hand, an empty heart is all that wrests your legs apart.
- Veronica Franco: You sleep with Giulia every night for duty's sake. I slept with the King of France once for duty's sake. Who does not forgive?
- Marco Venier: Perhaps I just can't live with it.
- Veronica Franco: But I love you.
- Veronica Franco: What do you yearn for, King Henry?
- King Henry: [He holds a dagger at her throat] You've heard the rumors, Veronica?
- Veronica Franco: Yes, sire.
- King Henry: The king's a pervert.
- Veronica Franco: What do you really yearn for, King Henry?
- King Henry: Tears.
- Veronica Franco: Tears for whom?
- King Henry: Your tears.
- Veronica Franco: You yearn for my tears? I don't think so.
- King Henry: Then what do I yearn for?
- Veronica Franco: [She takes the dagger from him slowly, then points it at his neck] Why don't we find out?
- Veronica Franco: If I were yours alone, your property, chaste and silent, you would soon tire of me.
- Marco Venier: You're wrong!
- Veronica Franco: Am I?
- Zealot: Citizens of Venice! Look around you now at the disease and deaths that have taken over our once beautiful city, and tell me this plague is not a punishment from God! We are surrounded by harlots and courtesans! We must cast out those who tempt us for we are a city of shame of fornication and carnal practices that defy description. We will go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah and become dust in the sands of time!
- Paola Franco: In order to choose your lovers wisely, you need to understand men. No matter their shape or size, position, or wealth, they all dream of the temptress. The irresistible, unapproachable Venus, who quickly turns pliable maiden when they've had a hard day.
- Paola Franco: A courtesan is a force of nature in a civilized cloak. Any chambermaid can flop down, take off her shirt, and men will come. Your true power comes from something much - deeper than beauty. Cleopatra knew that. Theodosia. Aspasia. She could seduce a man at 20 paces without revealing an inch of flesh.
- Beatrice Venier: When my daughter is old enough, I want you to make her a courtesan.
- Veronica Franco: I will not pimp your daughter.
- Beatrice Venier: Look at the life you live! The freedom that you have. Will you deny my daughter the same chance?
- Veronica Franco: How do people marry, Mother?
- Paola Franco: They strike a bargain.
- Veronica Franco: What's to bargain over if you're in love?
- Paola Franco: Marriage is a contract, not a perpetual tryst.
- Maffio Venier: Oh! Oh, Olivia. Oh, glorious maid, Of virtue spare, With bosoms like those, Who could care?
- Marco Venier: My rod, my lady, a hand.
- [first lines]
- Veronica Franco: We danced our youth in a dreamed-of city. Venice. Paradise. Proud and pretty We lived for love and lust and beauty. Pleasure then our only duty. Floating then 'twixt heaven and earth. And drunk on plenty's blessed mirth. We thought ourselves eternal then. Our glory sealed by God's own pen. But paradise we found is always frail. Against man's fear will always fail.
- Marco Venier: I think I've missed you.
- Veronica Franco: With all the court ladies to amuse you?
- Marco Venier: Roman women, they can't hold a candle to the Venetian. Nor can French, nor can Florentine, nor can any woman from Europe to the Levant.
- Veronica Franco: No doubt you've sampled them all.
- Marco Venier: All but idle amusement until you blossomed.
- Veronica Franco: How could they?
- Marco Venier: How could who what?
- Veronica Franco: Your parents marry your sister off to that piece of decaying flesh.
- Marco Venier: That piece of decaying flesh is a cousin of the doge, confidant of the pope. The Roman court adores him.
- Veronica Franco: The Roman court doesn't have to sleep with him.
- Marco Venier: Oh, you'd be surprised.
- Marco Venier: I bought this in Rome for you.
- Veronica Franco: You didn't buy it for me.
- Marco Venier: Yes, I did. I just didn't know it.
- Pietro Venier: [escorting his daughter and her new husband to the bridal chamber] Do honor to the houses of Gritti and Venier. For Venice.
- Marco Venier: I think perhaps you're too young - to accept what I would - truly give you.
- Veronica Franco: I am not so young as you are vain.
- Paola Franco: Beauty is a manifestation of the divine. That theory built the Sistine Chapel and it'll do the same for you.
- Marco Venier: Marriage isn't romantic. That's why God invented poetry.
- Veronica Franco: To sweeten men's lying lips!
- Veronica Franco: Mother, we can't go in there.
- Paola Franco: Ladies can't go in there. Courtesans can.
- Paola Franco: Daughter, you have reached too high. I told you, marriage is a contract. Two countries signing a treaty. To a man of Marco's station, it has nothing to do with love. But, you can still have Marco. But not in wedlock. There's an alternative to marriage. You'll become a courtesan - like your mother used to be.
- Veronica Franco: You were a courtesan?
- Paola Franco: One of the best.
- Maffio Venier: Venice may as well be deemed one large floating brothel.
- Marco Venier: What's biting your ass this fair evening, cousin?
- Maffio Venier: Um. Poverty. Always puts me in a bad mood.
- Marco Venier: Can you begrudge the fairer sex their little crumbs?
- Maffio Venier: No, though they do make more in a night than I a month. The lovely whores.
- Paola Franco: Come. You can't be squeamish. If you don't enjoy it, they'll smell it, like a dog smells fear. And they'll hate you for it.
- Maffio Venier: Must be interesting being in a room full of men, most of whom you've seen with their pants down.
- Veronica Franco: Puts it all in some kind of perspective.
- Veronica Franco: Venice, mother, virgin, queen, and goddess, To be all five at once is no mean trick, If women's lust lost Eden, Our redress to be, Hearth, heart and home to every - prick.
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