Dangerous Beauty

Marco Venier:
I'm getting married Veronica. Congratulate me.

Veronica Franco:
Felicitations on your grand match.

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.

Beatrice Venier:
No biblical hell could ever be worse than this state of perpetual inconsequence.

Veronica Franco:
There's not a man in Venice I can't have.

Marco Venier:
And there's not a woman in Venice I can't have.

Veronica Franco:
You cannot have me.

Maffio Venier:
It must be interesting to be 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.

Paola Franco:
Desire begins in the mind.

Paola Franco:
It's the wanting that keeps us alive.

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.

Marco Venier:
What God and greed have joined together, let no love put asunder.

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 that we might know his mercy.

Marco Venier:
I see my fated stars your eyes, they melt me as the sun does snow. 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.

Veronica Franco:
Such a gift might be easily taken back again.

Marco Venier:
Then name me any other gift.

Veronica Franco:
The book will do for now.

Marco Venier:
I think you're perhaps too young to accept what I would truly give you.

Veronica Franco:
I'm not so young as you are vain!

Marco Venier:
[Drunkenly] Veronica! Veronica! Veronica, my little poetesse. You’re the brightest star in the Venetian firn’ment - the coldest and yet the brightest. Veronica - my uncle tells me I have the feigned indifference of a man (a pause when Veronica's patron walks out behind her) about to be married. I’m getting married Veronica congratulate me.

Veronica Franco:
Felicitations on your grand match!

Marco Venier:
Ah - Generously put -

Veronica Franco:
Do you love her?

Marco Venier:
Do I have to?

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.

Paola Franco:
Desire begins in the mind. Cleopatra, Theodocia, she could seduce a man at twenty paces, without revealing an inch of flesh.