The verdict on this play over the years can be summed up in a single word: Meh.
Its existence went unnoticed from available evidence until 1623’s publication of the First Folio. Its origins are murky, at least as far as Shakespeare’s composition is concerned. Its performance history is rather slight for a comedy by the Bard; not even a movie adaptation.
Beyond that, it is a comedy that is not that funny and a romance which leaves a bad taste in many mouths. There are many fine things about it, particularly an engaging heroine and a villain who doubles as comic relief. It has an experimental quality about it one can either go with or not, trusting in the title not to be led astray.
Whether it delivers on that title isn’t clearly answered. Since that is the one thing people know about the play going in, let’s look into it.
Shakespeare’s object in this play centers on the multifaceted nature of being human, and how our virtues are threatened by our flaws. It is a play in many ways about acceptance in the face of mortality:
KING: Our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious things we have,
Not knowing them, until we know their grave.
Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,
Destroy our friends and after weep their dust:
Our own love waking cries to see what’s done,
While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon. [Act V, scene iii, lines 60-66]
 |
| In this painting by Francis Wheatley (1747-1801), the frail King bemoans his state at the start of the play to Helena and Bertram: "Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,/I quickly were dissolved from my hive/To give some laborers room." [I, ii, 65-67] Image from https://www.pinterest.com/folgerlibrary/alls-well-that-ends-well/ |
Taken in that spirit, I do like it, but what a patchy work!
Helena, spelled Hellen in some editions, is the doughty main character, the daughter of a late physician who has the power to heal the King of France of a life-draining fistula. She loves Count Bertram, the son of her adoptive mother. When the king asks her to name her price for his cure, she names Bertram, who responds by marrying her only under duress and abandoning her for the nearest war as soon as possible.
Never mind that; Helena is in love, and soon finds herself in a position to make her dream of wedded bliss come true. The fact that she is so persistent and enterprising makes her one of Shakespeare’s strongest female characters, a beacon of love in action.
HELENA: I know I love in
vain, strive against hope;
Yet in this captious and inteemable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still. [I, iii, 203-206]
 |
| Helena in pilgrim's garb, as she departs home to make her destiny in Italy with Bertram. "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,/Which we ascribe to Heaven..."[I, i, 223-224]. From an 1876 engraving by John G. Murdoch at https://theshakespearecode.blog/2017/02/13/how-coleridge-got-alls-well-that-ends-well-right-and-wrong/ |
If only the object of her pursuit wasn’t so unworthy.
Bertram is one of Shakespeare’s direst rogues. As a soldier, he is a model of courage and dispatch. As a man, he is an utter cad. Nothing we see of him in the play justifies Helena’s veneration.
His only saving grace for audiences is his dunderheaded dependence on Parolles, a cowardly windbag who augments Bertram’s faults but also provides some needed comic relief:
LAFEW: So, my good window of lattice, fare thee well; thy casement I need not open, for I look through thee. Give me thy hand.
PAROLLES: My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.
LAFEW: Ay, with all my heart; and thou art worthy of it.
PAROLLES: I have not, my lord, deserved it.
LAFEW: Yes, good faith, every dram of it; and I will not bate thee a scruple. [II, iii, 214-222]
Parolles is a fascinating figure, as the contempt he earns from everybody but Bertram through most of the play doesn’t faze him in the least. You have to respect him for that, if not his lies and casual exploitation of trust. As he tells us in one of his monologues, “There’s place and means for every man alive./I’ll after them.” [IV, iii, 352-355]
 |
| Parolles fancies himself quite a soldier, as evidenced by his penchant for scarves and other frilly accoutrements. Yet he folds easily under pressure: "I will confess what I know without constraint./If ye pinch me like a pastry I can say no more." Above, Jim Helsinger as Parolles in a 2018 Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival production. Image from https://pashakespeare.org/production-history/alls-well-that-ends-well/ |
Much of the dislike for this play is centered on Bertram. As being his wife is Helena’s only objective, seeing him act badly has the effect of lowering her in people’s esteem, however brilliant she is.
He’s quite reprehensible in the way he dismisses Helena, backed up by Parolles’s tawdry counsel:
BERTRAM: I’ll send her
straight away. Tomorrow
I’ll to the wars, she to her single sorrow.
PAROLLES: Why, these balls
bound; there’s noise in it. ’Tis hard:
A young man married is a man that’s marred.
Therefore away, and leave her bravely; go.
The king has done you wrong; but hush ’tis so. [II, iii, 298-303]
I take the view that love is blind and it’s not for us to judge a woman’s fancies. It’s clear she has made up her mind, and her stick-to-it-tiveness throughout the play commands respect. She is not only one of Shakespeare’s most independent characters (even her adoptive mother, and Bertram’s real mother, can’t convince her to drop her unfaithful son) but also one of his most erotic. Her ploy for winning Bertram is to set up another woman for him to bed, then take her place, in essence consummating their marriage by masquerading as someone else.
She revels later in the success of her trickery:
HELENA: But, O strange
men,
That can such sweet use make of what they hate,
When saucy trusting of the cozened thoughts
Defiles the pitchy night! So lust doth play
With what it loathes, for that which is away. [IV, iv, 21-25]
 |
| Helena knows what she wants, and allows no qualm to stand in her way: "All's well that ends well yet,/Though time seems so adverse and means unfit." [V, i, 25-26] Photo by Michael Bailey from a 2010 production with Ginna Hoben as Helena and Aiden O'Reilly as Bertram. https://theplaystheblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/all-yet-seems-well/ |
In Shakespeare’s time, certainly, and more so in the centuries that immediately followed, many were shocked by a woman who so openly rejoiced at the end of her virginity. Today, it’s still not easy for many people to accept her joy at their physical union. He’s such a jerk!
The counterargument to all that is this is a comedy, in fact a remarriage comedy, where the object is to honor the bonds of matrimony by seeing them overcome any challenge. Ultimately, Bertram’s caddishness, like Parolles’s pusillanimity, are qualities designed to react against and make the play more shocking and funny.
The problem with All’s Well That Ends Well is it just isn’t that funny. The first two acts set the stage with some of the lamest japeries in Shakespeare’s canon. This includes a clown, one Lavatch, who riles Bertram’s mother with lame jokes about cuckold husbands, which Shakespeare always brought up in lieu of better material.
CLOWN: I am out o’ friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for my wife’s sake.
COUNTESS: Such friends are thine enemies, knave.
CLOWN: Y’are shallow, madam, in great friends; for the knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop: if I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge. [I, iii, 39-46]
 |
| "He was my son,/But I do wash his name out of my blood./And thou art all my child." The countess consoles Helena after Bertram's abandonment in this scene performed by Judi Dench as the Countess and Claudie Blakley as Helena. Photo by Tristram Kenton for https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/apr/25/shakespeares-plays-as-you-like-them-alls-well-that-ends-well |
There is also the unmasking of Parolles as a poltroon, which is more satisfying but takes way too long to effect. Shakespeare dampens the effect by making everyone but Bertram aware of Parolles’s true character, which dampens the effect of the revelation once it arrives in an elaborate scene.
Helena’s suffering offers little opportunity for levity. Both as romance and as comedy, it is only in the last three acts that the play lifts off, provided you don’t get bothered by Bertram’s overall foulness. We meet two more extraordinary characters, Diana and her widowed mother, who join with Helena to bring a crafty plan to fruition.
This is where Bertram’s caddishness serves a purpose, as it gets turned to Helena’s advantage. Feeling his oats, he openly lusts for Diana and tries to bribe her with his prize ring. Diana, handsomely paid by Helena, resists long enough to whet his appetite further, then sets the stage for a night-darkened rendezvous so she can swap places with Helena.
 |
| Parolles exposed in Act IV. During his interrogation, he offers to serve up many secrets about Bertram and his army, not knowing they are the very ones interrogating him. "He has out-villained villainy so far that the rarity redeems him," marvels one lord [IV, iii, 286-287]. Image from https://nosweatshakespeare.com/alls-well-that-ends-well-play/ |
Shakespeare’s play is taken from a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron, which had been put in English circulation by William Painter’s The Palace Of Pleasure. There, the Bertram character was not so unpleasant, which leaves scholars wondering why Shakespeare recast him so.
As I suggested before, this was one of Shakespeare’s more experimental endeavors, and not completely successful. But I think he was more concerned with Helena, with making her the star of the show. The play ends on a note that makes clear she is setting the terms:
HELENA: Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?
BERTRAM: If she, my liege,
can make me know this clearly,
I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.
HELENA: If it appear not
plain, and prove untrue,
Deadly divorce step between me and you! [V, iii, 314-318]
No comments:
Post a Comment