Blackadder the Third (TV Series)

Ink and Incapability (1987)

Rowan Atkinson: Edmund Blackadder, butler to the Prince

Photos 

Quotes 

• Dr. Samuel Johnson : [places two manuscripts on the table, but picks up the top one]  Here it is, sir. The very cornerstone of English scholarship. This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.

  Blackadder : Every single one, sir?

  Dr. Samuel Johnson : Every single word, sir!

  Blackadder : Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.

  Dr. Samuel Johnson : What?

  Blackadder : "contrafibularities", sir? It is a common word down our way.

  Dr. Samuel Johnson : Damn!

  [writes in the book] 

  Blackadder : Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.

• [referring to Dr. Johnson's dictionary] 

  Blackadder : Right, Baldrick. Where's the manuscript?

  Baldrick : You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?

  Blackadder : Yes, Baldrick. The manuscript belonging to Dr. Johnson.

  Baldrick : You mean the baity fellow in the black coat who just left?

  Blackadder : Yes, Baldrick. Dr. Johnson.

  Baldrick : So, you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string belonging to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is?

  Blackadder : Yes, Baldrick. I am. And if you don't answer, then the booted bony thing with five toes at the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with soft, dangly collection of objects in your trousers. Now for the last time, Baldrick, where is Dr. Johnson's manuscript?

  Baldrick : On the fire.

  Blackadder : On the *what*?

  Baldrick : The hot, orangy thing under the stony mantelpiece.

• [Baldrick has accidentally burnt Dr. Johnson's dictionary] 

  Blackadder : Sir, I have been unable to replace the dictionary. I am therefore leaving immediately for Nepal, where I intend to live as a goat.

• Blackadder : We are going to Mrs. Miggins' Coffee Shop, we are going to find out where Dr. Johnson keeps a copy of his dictionary, and YOU are going to steal it.

  Baldrick : Me?

  Blackadder : Yes, you.

  Baldrick : Why me?

  Blackadder : Because you burnt it, Baldrick.

  Baldrick : But then I will go to Hell forever for stealing.

  Blackadder : Believe me, Baldrick, eternity in the company of Beelzebub, and all his hellish instruments of death, will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me... and this pencil.

• Samuel Johnson : Not only have you impecuniated my dictionary, you have also lost the chance to act as patron to the only book in the world that is even better!

  Blackadder : Oh. And what is that, sir? "Dictionary 2: The Return of the Killer Dictionary"?

• Blackadder : [rewriting the dictionary]  Baldrick, what have you done?

  Baldrick : I've done "C" and "D."

  Blackadder : Right. Let's have it, then.

  Baldrick : Right. "Big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in."

  Blackadder : What's that?

  Baldrick : "C."

  Blackadder : Yes. Tiny misunderstanding. Still, my hopes weren't high. Oh, and "D?"

  Baldrick : I'm quite pleased with "dog."

  Blackadder : Yes, and your definition of "dog" is?

  Baldrick : "Not a cat."

• Prince George : Ah, Dr. Johnson, damn cold day!

  Dr. Samuel Johnson : Indeed it is sir - but a very fine one, for I celebrated last night the encyclopedic implementation of my pre-meditated orchestration of demotic Anglo-Saxon.

  Prince George : Nope - didn't catch any of that.

  Dr. Samuel Johnson : Well, I simply observed, sir, that I'm felicitous since during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorisation of the vocabluary of our post-Norman tongue.

  Prince George : Well, I don't know what you're talking about, but it sounds damn saucy, you lucky thing! I know some fairly liberal-minded girls, but I've never penultimated any of them in a solar sojourn, or for that matter, been given any Norman tongue.

  Blackadder : I believe, sir, that the Doctor is trying to tell you that he is happy because he has finished his book. It has apparently taken him ten years.

  Prince George : Well, I'm a slow reader myself.

• Baldrick : Sounds like a bag of grapefruits to me, Mr B.

  Blackadder : The phrase, Baldrick, is "a case of sour grapes" - and yes it bloody well is.

• [about the dictionary] 

  Blackadder : No, sir, it is not. It's the most pointless book since How To Learn French was translated into French.

  Prince George : You haven't got anything personal against Johnson, have you Blackadder?

  Blackadder : Good Lord, sir, not at all. In fact, I had never heard of him until you mentioned him just now.

  Prince George : But you do think he's a genius...?

  Blackadder : No, sir, I do not. Unless, of course, the definition of "genius" in his ridiculous Dictionary is "a fat dullard or wobblebottom; a pompous ass with sweatly dewflaps".

  Prince George : Ha. close shave there, then. Lucky you warned me. I was about to embrace this unholy arse to the royal bosom.

  Blackadder : I'm delighted to have been instrumental of keeping your bosom free of arses, sir.

• Prince George : Someone said I had the wit and intellect of a donkey.

  Blackadder : Oh, an absurd suggestion sir, unless it was a particularly stupid donkey.

• Prince George : [wakes up agitated]  Oh, Blackadder. Blackadder!

  Blackadder : You called sir?

  Prince George : Wha- wha- what time is it?

  Blackadder : Three o'clock in the afternoon, your highness.

  Prince George : Oh, thank God for that, I thought I'd overslept.

• Blackadder : Baldrick, go to the kitchen and make me something quick and simple to eat, would you? Two slices of bread with something in between.

  Baldrick : What, like Gerald Lord Sandwich had the other day?

  Blackadder : Yes, a few rounds of geralds.

• Prince George : [reading]  "Medium-sized insectivore with protruding nasal implement." Doesn't sound much like a bee to me!

  Blackadder : It's an aardvark your highness, can't you see that? It's a bloody aardvark!

• Blackadder : [describing a novel he's written]  Edmund. A Butler's Tale. A huge, roller coaster of a novel in four hundred sizzling chapters. A searing indictment of domestic servitude in the eighteenth century, with some hot gypsies thrown in.

• Blackadder : Leaving already doctor? Not staying for your pendigestatery interludicule ?

• Blackadder : Baldrick, that is by far and away, and without a shadow of doubt, the worst and most contemptible plan in the history of the universe.