All’s Well That Ends Well – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1, Scene 1 (971-76, Bertram, son to the Countess of Roussillon and a ward of the court because his father has died, leaves the Roussillon estate. The Countess and Lord Lafeu discuss the younger generation’s qualities, and express their hopes for them; alone, Helen—the Countess’s ward due to her father’s death—confesses her love for Bertram, unrequitable due to her inferior rank; Helen and Paroles discuss the utility of female virginity; alone, she takes the view that curing the King’s illness might be a way to demonstrate her worthiness.)

The first scene begins with mourning and the departure of the Countess of Roussillon’s son Bertram to visit the ailing King, whose ward he is due to the death of the Count of Roussillon. The French Lord Lafeu assures the young man that he will find himself treated graciously by the ailing King of France.

Together, the Countess and Lafeu posit a balance in the young between inherited virtue and acquired grace and honor. The Countess says of her ward Helen, whose well-regarded physician father died recently, that she “derives her honesty and / achieves her goodness” (972, 1.1.40-41), meaning that she is good by nature and puts that goodness into action regularly. That is a fine compliment since it describes the outcome of a true Renaissance education. [1] The wish for Bertram, meanwhile, is similarly that his “blood and virtue” (972, 1.1.56) will enter into healthy competition to make him as good as he can be.

There is just a hint here of the opening of a very different play, Hamlet. Both that play and All’s Well begin praise and advice on the part of older characters for younger ones. We will find out plenty more about Bertram later, but the praise for Helen seems deserved, and the Countess’s admonition not to shed so many tears “lest it be rather thought you affect / a sorrow than to have—” (972, 1.1.47) seems well-intentioned.

Lord Lafeu’s conversation with Helen entails his offering her a version of the advice that Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, offers him concerning his grief for Hamlet Sr. [2] Lafeu says to Helen as she weeps, “Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, / exces- / sive grief the enemy to the living” (972, 1.1.49-50).

All the same, when Helen is finally free of her elders’ company, we see that she is not the simple girl that either Lafeu or the Countess think she is. The tears she cries, by her own inward admission, are not for her departed father; her grief for him is more pretense than undivided affection. She is in love with Bertram. The obstacle she confronts—and that so saddens her—is Bertram’s great rank, now that he will take his father’s place as Count Roussillon.

Helen herself describes the affection she feels for this young man as the product of “idolatrous fancy” (973, 1.1.93), especially since it is not reciprocated. She expresses her dismay with remarkable eloquence: “‘Twere all one / That I should love a bright particular star / And think to wed it, he is so above me” (973, 1.1.81-83). It seems impossible to convey more fully the agonizing sense that comes from loving someone who does not love us back. In Helen’s case, this misery will impel her towards becoming a courtship radical: a mere gentlewoman, she will pursue the nobleman Bertram at all costs.

As the present play moves forward, the truth of Helena’s observation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream will becomes as clear as can be: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity.” [3] The more we learn about Bertram, the easier it is to see that Helen is projecting her own virtue and excellence into a young man who is mainly and obviously a creature of his aristocratic birth—there is no sign of special goodness or superiority in him, even if Helen persists in seeing such qualities there.

Helen’s conversation with Paroles centers upon the concept of virginity, which of course this rascal—a modern instance of ancient Greek and Roman comedy’s “braggart soldier” [4] —characterizes as at worst a candidate for the worst sin in the Christian canon, and at best a fashionable commodity to be sold to the highest bidder when the time is most opportune: “Off with’t while ‘tis vendible; answer / the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears / her cap out of fashion …” (974, 1.1.144-46). Paroles seems to have put altogether too much thought into the subject.

Helen’s comments throughout her conversation with Paroles go very far above his head. Her lightly mocking yet poignant description of the French court whereto Bertram is going, for example, is brilliant, and is scarcely answered by this foppish interlocutor. “The court,” says Helen, is “a learning place …” (975, 1.1.165), a place where her beloved will learn many fine, courtly things that only draw him farther beyond her lowlier orbit. Already, she sees herself as a silent well-wisher, to Bertram, one “Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes …” (975, 1.1.170).

Helen’s regard for this parasite Paroles, whom she sees for what he is, stems from her admiration for Bertram. She trades barbs excellently with him, as when she mocks his military pretentions with, “The wars hath so kept you under, that you must needs / be born under Mars” (975, 1.1.182-83). To such wittiness, Paroles the word-parrier, ironically, can say only, “I am so full of businesses I cannot answer thee / acutely” (975, 1.1.192-93), and condescendingly, if gently enough, takes his leave of the young lady who has thoroughly bested him at his own game.

With Paroles dismissed after his pledge to “return perfect courtier” (975, 1.1.193), we see Helen’s faith in merit properly showcased in a way that defies too-easy belief in fate and the handicaps that a person of quality but without rank may confront: “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie / Which we ascribe to heaven…. / … Who ever strove / To show her merit that did miss her love?” (923, 1.1.201-02, 211-12) [5]

Helen already has it in mind to pay the King of France a visit and administer her father’s cure to take away his disease: “my project may deceive me,” she declares, “But my intents are fixed and will not leave me” (976, 1.1.213-14).

Act 1, Scene 2 (976-78, the King is unwell, but welcomes Bertram and praises his departed father, Count Roussillon; the King avoids showing partiality to either Siena or Florence regarding their war, saying his courtiers may serve in either army if they wish; he also voices sincere doubts about his hopes for transferring his legacy to the younger generation.)

In the second scene, there is still more praise amongst the elders when the King showers encomiums upon both Bertram and his departed father; of the latter, he says, “He had the wit which I can well observe / Today in our young lords, but they may jest / Till their own scorn return to them unnoted / Ere they can hide their levity in honour…” (977, 1.2.32-35). The Second Lord Dumaine suggests that backsliding young aristocrats need the exercise of war to keep them sharp and in line.

Though the King won’t send the Florentines any help directly because the Duke of Austria has asked him to refrain, some martial experience, says the Second Lord Dumaine, “well may serve / A nursery to our gentry, who are sick / For breathing and exploit” (976, 1.2.15-17). This advice no doubt plays to the aging King’s anxiety about the transference of deep qualities and proper forms from the old to a new generation. (We might ask whether or not military experience does anything for Bertram, but that’s a question for later.)

The King reflects that Bertram’s father had said young people care for nothing but fashion, implying that the young inevitably exhaust their energy upon unworthy objects: “‘Let me not live’, quoth he, / ‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff / Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses / All but new things disdain’ …” (977, 1.2.58-60).

What’s in doubt here, as mentioned above, is the success of a process central to many of Shakespeare’s comedies: the transference of virtue from one generation to the next. Is there any continuity beyond the lowest common denominator, the shallowest patterns of conduct and belief? Yet this anxiety is set forth with becoming humility: the King says of himself in response to the Second Lord Dumaine’s praise, “I fill a place, I know’t” (978, 1.2.69). Bertram exits after his warm reception by the King.

On the whole, the attitudes expressed by the elder characters in this second scene differ markedly from the elders in the first scene. The King does not, however, speak mean-spiritedly—it’s just that age and illness have worn him down and made him rather glum. Whether what he professes to see in the young lord Bertram is an accurate vision is another matter.

Act 1, Scene 3 (978-83, the Clown (Lavache) discusses the practicalities and ethics of marriage with the Countess of Roussillon; when the Countess finds out that Helen loves Bertram, she pries this secret from her; Helen wants to offer the King a remedy that her late father, a renowned doctor, developed, and the supportive Countess allows Helen to go visit the King.)

The Clown (who is referred to as “Lavache” in some editions) prepares us for the annunciation of Helen’s love interest in Bertram by referring to his own wish to marry the serving woman Isbel, which subject he humorously broaches to the Countess. This “Clown” is a naturalist who doesn’t suppose there is any way to escape from the world, the flesh, or the devil: as he says while explaining to the Countess why he intends to marry, “My poor body, madam, requires it; I am driven on by / the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil drives” (978, 1.3.24-25). [6]

Although there’s a bit of Pauline stuffing in the justification for marriage that he gives the Countess, [7] in truth the Clown doesn’t pay much attention to the concept of virtue. Parodically recycling this play’s emphasis on organic imagery implying nourishment and growth, he even praises adultery: “He / that ears my land spares my team and gives me leave to in [8] / the crop…. / He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood …” (979, 1.3.38-40).

The Clown is as chipper about the prospect of being cuckolded as Paroles was a few scenes back at the thought of a woman’s loss of virginity. [9] When the Countess orders him to fetch Helen to her, the Clown’s parting quips at the great lady concern his rather dim view (if not necessarily atypical in Shakespeare’s day) of women’s virtue. “An we might have a good / woman born but or every blazing star or at an earthquake,” says he, “‘twould mend the lottery well” (980, 1.3.76-78).

Immediately thereafter, the Steward (Rinaldo), who recently overheard Helen talking by herself, informs the Countess of the young woman’s affection for Bertram (980, 1.3.93-98). To her credit, the Countess sides entirely with natural desire and quality in the person of Helen, saying, “Even so it was with me when I was young” (980, 1.3.113). She is charitable where this young woman is concerned, and tests her by declaring herself her “mother.”

The Countess feigns (or actually feels) surprise when Helen shies away from such an intimate term as “mother” and protests that, “The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother: / I am from humble, he from honored name; / …. / My master, my dear lord he is, and I / His servant live and will his vassal die” (981, 1.3.140-41, 143-44). This seems at the same time disingenuous on Helen’s part, and yet understandable and even becoming: it’s clear to her that she is in love with Bertram, but by no means clear that this should be at all acceptable to the Countess.

The Countess herself uses a bit of honest deception, pretending to have just now understood that Helen is in love with her son. She proceeds to drag this already-conned information from Helen by rhetorical persistence, and at last it works—Helen confesses that she loves Bertram, and she shows much merit in making this confession, saying, “I follow him not / By any token of presumptuous suit, / Nor would I have him till I do deserve him …” (929, 1.3.182-84). As yet, Helen still describes her success as all but an impossibility—hopeless due to her inferior rank.

Helen shows great mettle, too, in her determination at this early point to risk her life by going to the court in Paris, where she means to convince the King to let her administer her father’s medicines and thereby cure him. She declares to the Countess, “I’d venture / The well-lost life of mine on his grace’s cure …” (983, 1.3.232-33), and the older woman promises to help her any way she can. The Countess sees that this is part of Helen’s plan to make herself worthy of Bertram, and promises to help in any way she can.

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (983-88, Paroles advises Bertram to honor military fashion; the King says goodbye to the French courtiers as they head for the war between Siena and Florence, but insists that Bertram stay behind; Helen makes her way to court, and, wagering her own life as the forfeit, convinces the King to let her attempt a cure; if the cure is successful, her “price” is that she be allowed to choose any courtier she desires.)

The King bids a fond—and by his lights probably a final—goodbye to the First and Second Lords Dumaine and their companions since they are off to the Italian wars. He encourages them to go off and take what they desire, which is honor on the battlefield, and to avoid the “girls of Italy” (984, 2.1.19) and their seductive ways. Bertram, however, is to stay behind and spend his time dancing gracefully, for the King considers him too young and tender for such endeavors.

The Lords Dumaine, seconded by Paroles, encourage Bertram to steal away and come to the wars with them, and the young man is much inclined to do just that. Paroles adds a request of his own for the lords: they should find “one Captain Spurio, with his / cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek.” Paroles says, “It was this very sword entrenched it. Say to him I live, and / observe his reports for me” (984, 2.1.40-43). This sounds like a challenge to Spurio.

Why does Paroles so strongly recommend to Bertram the Lords Dumaine? As always with him, it comes down to fashion: the lords “wear them- / selves in the cap of the time” and “move under the influence of the most / received star …” (984, 2.1.50-53). The Lords Dumaine, it seems, are the shining “influencers” of Renaissance France, so Bertram had best follow them closely. In the society Shakespeare describes, war itself is something of a fashion, a field where one can forge a name for valor and reap the social benefits thereof.

A special decorum, then, surrounds this most destructive of activities, and for Paroles, belonging—not honor, integrity, or achievement—is paramount. We may recall Kent’s words to the slippery servant Oswald, “You cowardly / rascal, nature disclaims in thee; a tailor made thee.” [10] Such hollowness seems always to haunt works and activities of genuine merit.

Next, Lord Lafeu talks the King into admitting Helen to his presence: he tells him, “I have seen a medicine / That’s able to breathe life into a stone …” (985, 2.1.70-71). And as for young Helen, Lafeu describes her as something of a miracle: he says, “I have spoke / With one that in her sex, her years, profession, / Wisdom, and constancy, hath amazed me more / Than I dare blame my weakness” (985, 2.1.80-83).

The King at first refuses Helen’s earnest offer to cure him since he believes it would be indecorous and perhaps even undermine his dignity, along with that of the doctors to whom he has entrusted his care: he “may not be so credulous of cure / When our most learnèd doctors leave us …” (986, 2.1.113-14). [11]

But in the end, Helen wins the argument by her boldness, exclaiming, “Of heaven, not me, make an experiment” (987, 2.1.152). In true fairy-tale style, the young woman ventures her chaste reputation and her very life (987, 2.1.171-72) on the efficacy of her father’s medicine. [12] If she fails, let her good name be “Traduced by odious ballads” and her life snuffed out “With vilest torture …” (987, 2.1.170, 172). In return, Helen will exercise the right to choose any man short of royal blood who lies in the King’s power to bestow. The King of France accepts, and the perilous bet is on.

Act 2, Scene 2 (988-89, the Countess kills some time chatting with the Clown, Lavache, who tells her he knows of a conversational rejoinder to any remark; the Countess sends the Clown to court bearing a letter for Helen and greetings to Bertram.)

Bantering with the Countess, the Clown repeatedly serves up his wonderful catch-phrase “O Lord, sir!” (989, 2.2.39) This all-purpose reply is redolent of courtly deception and evasion: it’s the kind of thing one says to intimate disbelief that one’s interlocutor would be so naïve or impertinent as to ask such a question. This silly style of conversation employs the opposite of Helen’s bluntness in advancing her love for Bertram, even though she will resort to sanctioned deception to complete the match. [13]

The Countess drives home the play’s interest in youth and age in her manner of soliciting the Clown to make good on his offer of courtly insight: “To be young again if we could! I will be a fool in / question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, / sir, are you a courtier?” (989, 2.2.36-38)

Act 2, Scene 3 (989-96, Lafeu needles Paroles over his servant-status; the King’s recovery astonishes the court; Helen chooses Bertram from among several courtiers presented to her; Bertram rejects the lowly Helen, but the angry King overrides the rejection; Bertram submits, but privately he is determined never to consummate the marriage; Lord Lafeu pegs the dandy Paroles at his true value; Bertram plans to escape Helen and France by running off to take part in the Italian wars.)

The King enters fully recovered, and even dancing: says Lafeu, “Why, he’s able to lead her a coranto” (990, 2.3.40-41), and again we see that the elders in this play are not irrelevant after all. They are not stage props. But when Helen chooses Bertram out of an aristocratic lineup with the formula, “I dare not say I take you, but I give / Me and my service, ever whilst I live / Into your guiding power” (992, 2.3.100-02), the young man’s first reaction is to reject what is effectively the King’s choice. He does not want to take Helen for his wife.

This rejection is obviously understandable in purely human terms. Helen has said she will not force herself on the young man, but nonetheless she forcibly gives herself to him even though he does not want her. Under the circumstances, Bertram’s request, “In such a business give me leave to use / The help of mine own eyes” (992, 2.3.105-06) sounds reasonable. Still, reciprocity may not be the issue here. The King’s will is supreme in such a society as Shakespeare conjures, and Bertram is being disrespectful since he is the King’s ward.

It’s clear that the King believes his authority has been impudently challenged by a subject. Part of his reasoning with Bertram lies in trying to explain to the brittle young man where honor comes from in the first place: “’Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which / I can build up” (992, 2.3.115-16) and “From lowest place when virtuous things proceed / The place is dignified by th’ doer’s deed” (992, 2.3.123-24). [14] But when that logic fails, the King gets to the point: “My honor’s at the stake, which to defeat / I must produce my power” (993, 2.3.147-48).

Overawed at last, Bertram makes a hollow submission to the King: “I submit / My fancy to your eyes” (993, 2.3.165-66). Royal eyes, it seems, trump merely noble inclinations. In this instance, many viewers and readers will probably side with the King. As Tennyson would one day write, “Kind hearts are more than coronets, / And simple faith than Norman blood.” [15]

And then comes Paroles, who comically rejects the category of servitude to which Bertram has just offered unsuccessful battle. Lafeu played Paroles like a fiddle at the beginning of Scene 3, taking issue with Paroles’ annoying habit of completing others’ thoughts (2.3.9-36). Now he upsets the punctilious dandy by saying, “Your lord and master did well to make his recantation,” to which Paroles replies, “Recantation? My lord? My master?” (994, 2.3.184-85)

The clothes really do make this man, and he is not well-made. Lafeu’s put-down of Paroles is classic: “I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty / wise fellow…. / Yet the scarves and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of / too great a burden” (994, 2.3.197-201).

Paroles may be full of decorous words (French les paroles, les mots), but he is not what we would call “a man of substance.” When Paroles continues to stew in resentment at the application of the word “master” to his service, Lafeu at least says bluntly, “The devil it is that’s thy master. Why dost though garter / up thy arms o’this fashion?” (995, 2.3.239)

The elderly Lafeu has the perspicacity to have already made his judgment of Paroles after a few suppers’ talk with him, whose words and decking-out don’t match his true qualities or deeds. Perhaps we had best not make too much of this species of wisdom since, after all, Bertram comes by it without much of a struggle later in the play, in Act 4, allowing the Lords Dumaine to demonstrate the true mettle of one Paroles, liar and coward. [16]

In any case, Bertram huddles with Paroles after Lafeu is finished insulting the dandy, and decides to leave France and Helen (before even consummating the marriage) in favor of participating in the Florentine wars: “Wars is no strife / To the dark house and the detested wife” (996, 2.3.278-79). He will pack Helen off to his home, where he expects that his mother the Countess will treat her with appropriate coldness, knowing of his disdain for her.

Act 2, Scene 4 (996-97, Lavache displays his pessimism about life; Paroles tells Helen that Bertram wants her to depart for Roussillon, and she declares that she will do so after getting the King’s permission.)

The Clown insists that the Countess is not well for two simple reasons: “One, that she’s not in heaven …. / the other, that she’s in earth …” (996, 2.4.9-10). Lavache is ever the pessimist, and as the Norton editors point out, he is echoing an ancient tradition in Greek and Roman as well as Christian thought: count no one happy until he or she has died well. [17]

This insight gives way to a silly wit-match between the Clown and Paroles (996-97, 2.4.15-36) in which the Clown bests his opponent, seeing through him as did Lafeu. Helen also offers a simple declaration of obedience when she hears from Paroles that Bertram has directed her to leave the King’s court and go home to Roussillon: “In everything I wait upon his will” (944, 2.4.53). She will not keep to this declaration, we should note with approval.

Act 2, Scene 5 (997-99, Lafeu needles Paroles in Bertram’s presence and tells the young lord not to trust him; Bertram gives Helen a letter, refuses a parting kiss, and prepares to leave France in haste.)

Lafeu continues to needle Paroles, this time in Bertram’s presence, hoping to disabuse the young lord of his admiration for the slippery character: “The soul of this man is his / clothes; trust him not in matter of heavy consequence” (998, 2.5.40-41). But it is too soon for Bertram to accept such a verdict against a man who is, after all, counseling him to do exactly as he likes.

Bertram hands Helen a letter to be opened by his mother, rudely refuses his bride’s polite request for a kiss, and prepares to take his leave from France without bothering to visit the King as required (998-99, 2.5.66-84). It would be difficult for our opinion of Bertram to get any worse, but he will manage to do something in that regard later.

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (999-1000, the Duke of Florence prepares for battle, and, speaking with the two Lords Dumaine, says that any Frenchmen who come to his aid will be welcome.)

The Duke of Florence gets ready for battle, and marvels that the French King hasn’t agreed to order troops to his aid. The Second Lord Dumaine tells the Duke that he hesitates to offer conjectures about the King’s motives, while the First Lord Dumaine grounds his hopes in the notion that war will draw young Frenchmen to the Duke’s cause because such activity will relieve the “surfeit on their ease” (1000, 3.1.18). In other words, the youths need to exercise their martial spirits. [18]

Act 3, Scene 2 (1000-02, Lavache gives the Countess a letter from Bertram informing her of his imminent departure from the French Court and his rejection of Helen as a wife; the Countess is disappointed and all but disowns Bertram; Helen reads a separate letter from Bertram to her, in which he details seemingly impossible conditions for accepting her; guilt-stricken at driving him to fly toward the wars, Helen determines to leave Roussillon.)

The second scene takes us to the Countess, Helen, and Lavache the Clown at Roussillon. The latter bears Bertram’s letter to the Countess explaining why he has run away to the Italian wars (1000, 3.2.19-25). Bertram writes of Helen that “She hath recovered the King and undone me,” and goes on to say, “I have wedded / her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the ‘not’ eternal” (1000, 3.2.20-21). This course of action earns the Countess’s strong disapproval: she says, “This is not well, rash and unbridled boy: / To fly the favors of so good a king” (1000, 3.2.26-27).

In a separate letter to Helen, Bertram sets forth what he thinks are impossible conditions for his acceptance of her: “When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, / which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten / of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband …” (1001, 3.2.53-55). [19] Bertram seems as sure of these conditions as Macbeth is—wrongly—that Birnam Wood will never come to Dunsinane Hill. [20]

By this point, the Countess has reached a state of extreme disappointment in her son: as she says to Helen, “He was my son, / But I do wash his name out of my blood, / And thou art all my child” (1001, 3.2.62-64). She tells the two Lords Dumaine to convey to Bertram that “his sword can never win / The honor that he loses” (1002, 3.2.89-90) in Helen. The Countess rejects Bertram’s military quest for honor as a replacement for propriety in the domestic scene.

To end the scene, we learn Helen’s fearful reaction to this piece of news: she believes she has driven Bertram to this extreme and put him in deadly peril: “And is it I / That drive thee from the sportive court … / to be the mark / Of smoky muskets?” (1002, 3.2.101-04) This is what determines her to leave Roussillon: “My being here it is that holds thee hence” (1002, 3.2.119). Apparently, she has not yet conceived of her device to satisfy Bertram’s conditions.

Act 3, Scene 3 (1003, The Duke of Florence makes Bertram the commander of his cavalry force; alone, Bertram vows allegiance to Mars, god of war.)

In the third scene, the Duke of Florence promotes Bertram to the command of his cavalry forces. Bertram pays homage to drums of war, not thoughts of love: “Great Mars,” he vows, “I put myself into thy file” (1003, 3.3.9).

Act 3, Scene 4 (1003-04, Rinaldo tardily gives the Countess Helen’s guilt-wracked letter informing her of a plan to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Compostela; the Countess still hopes for a reconciliation between Helen and Bertram, and makes Rinaldo write him a letter reinforcing her sense of Helen’s worthiness.)

Rinaldo the Steward informs the Countess that Helen, leaving behind a letter accusing herself of “Ambitious love” (1003, 3.4.5) and setting forth her intention to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Compostela, has slipped away from Roussillon. [21] The Countess makes Rinaldo write to Bertram reinforcing upon him the virtue and worthiness of Helen. The Countess still hopes for a reconciliation between the two, and finds that she can’t choose between them: “Which of them both / Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense / To make distinction” (1004, 3.4.38-40).

Act 3, Scene 5 (1004-06, In Florence, a woman named Diana gives advice on how to keep her chastity to a Widow’s daughter, Diana, who is enduring Bertram’s attempt to seduce her; Helen, while seeking lodging during her pilgrimage, meets these women and lodges with them; together, they watch the Florentine soldiers pass by, and catch sight of Paroles and Bertram; Helen invites Diana and Mariana to dinner.)

In Florence, a Widow and the matron Mariana offer advice to the Widow’s daughter, Diana, on how to keep her virtue intact as she endures the seductive attentions of Bertram, who is—unsurprisingly—assisted in his attempt by Paroles.

Helen, while on her way to the shrine of St. James, is in Florence and in need of temporary lodgings, which she finds when she meets the Widow, who also introduces her to Diana and Mariana. In conversation with the Widow, Helen seems to derive her first thoughts in the direction of the time-honored device of the “bed trick”: the Widow says of Diana, “This young maid might do her / A shrewd turn if she pleased” (1005, 3.5.65-66). It isn’t too hard to see what she is insinuating: the two women need only switch places, and the trick is accomplished.

Subsequently, the Widow and her daughter Diana (along with Mariana) watch the Florentine soldiers file by below. Helen has already heard from Diana that Paroles has spoken very “coarsely” about her (1005, 3.2.54-55), and as the troops file by, the ladies espy Paroles and Bertram. By the scene’s end, Helen invites Diana and Mariana to supper, and the two cordially accept. Helen then says, “I will bestow some precepts of this virgin / Worthy the note” (1006, 3.2.97-98), which would seem to indicate that the bed-trick plot is taking shape in her mind.

Act 3, Scene 6 (1006-09, The two Lords Dumaine prevail upon Bertram to try Paroles’s mettle by encouraging him to go behind enemy lines and take back the lost drum that allegedly so troubles him, at which point they will mock-capture him; after Bertram agrees to this plot, he goes looking for his love interest, Diana.)

Bertram’s two colleagues, the First and Second Lords Dumaine, are trying to disabuse him of his regard for Paroles. By now, Bertram is at least asking, “Do you think I am so far deceived in him?” (1006, 3.6.6). He is open to the idea of testing this detestable character, having heard his friends declare the man “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless / liar, an hourly promise breaker …” (1006, 3.6.9-10). [22]

The two men have just plan. The Second Lord Dumaine says, “I, with a troop of Florentines, will / suddenly surprise him; …. / We will bind and hoodwink him so that he shall suppose no other but that he is carried / into the leaguer [camp] of the adversaries” (1007, 3.6.18-22). Paroles will be interrogated and intimidated by the disguised Florentines, at which point the lords are certain that he will spill any and every secret he has, betraying his comrades with abandon.

As we shall see, Paroles will go them one better, not only betraying but insulting his comrades with abandon. But for the moment, all we have is the plan. The two lords are very good at predicting exactly what the rascal will do: he’s the sort of person who might escape condemnation for a week because he’s a good talker, but as the First Lord Dumaine says, “when / you find him out, you have him ever after” (1008, 3.6.83-84).

With that, Bertram leads the Second Lord Dumaine to pay a visit to the chaste Diana.

Act 3, Scene 7 (1009-10, Helen brings the Widow’s daughter, Diana, into her ring-device-and-bed-trick scheme against Bertram; the Widow herself will help in the attempt to satisfy the conditions laid down by Bertram for accepting Helen; Diana will contract to have intercourse with Bertram if and only if he gives her the ancestral ring he is so fond of; Helen will substitute herself for Diana in a pitch-dark bedroom, and consummate her marriage with Bertram.)

Helen now draws the Widow and her daughter into her device to win back Bertram: first she admits to the mother that she is Bertram’s wife, and then explains that the daughter is to be instructed to consent to Bertram’s advances, on condition that he turn over to her the ancestral ring he wears, and then make herself scarce so that Helen may come at night and stealthily occupy her place in bed with Bertram (1009, 3.7.14-36). [23] Strictly, we really should call this a combination ring-and-bed trick, since this token is indeed one of Bertram’s conditions for accepting Helen.

Helen describes the virtue of this trick as “… wicked meaning in a lawful deed / And lawful meaning in a wicked act, / Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact” (1010, 3.7.45-47). She admits, in other words, that she is practicing deception and that he is attempting to suborn a maid, but nonetheless the act they perform together will be legitimate. Thwarting Bertram’s will is entirely acceptable in this play because it is graced by Helen’s good intentions.

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (1010-12, Paroles is captured, blindfolded, and baited by those faux “barbarians” the Lords Dumaine and others, who set upon Paroles, capture him, and pretend to use an interpreter to interrogate him; to save his own skin, Paroles readily offers to betray his own side’s secrets.)

In analyzing his own predicament, Paroles meditates upon the gap between words and action, and—in his case, at least—the infinite space between those realms terrifies him. [24] He’s quite self-aware, which makes him interesting, for all his knavery. In Paroles we can hear the strains of self-disgust, and a proof, if one were needed, that Oscar Wilde’s quip about action making us puppets and slaves of mere necessity needs some glossing: certain kinds of action are more likely than others to lead us into that trap. [25]

Here we catch Paroles narrating the story of himself to himself, so to speak. He doesn’t make sense to himself—why, oh why do I do it? he asks, and there’s no reason given why he’s pledged himself to a thing impossible: “What the devil should move me to undertake the / recovery of this drum, being not ignorant of the impossibility / and knowing I had no such purpose?” (1010, 4.1.31-33) Shakespeare is interested in the power of the lie, the seeming groundlessness of human dishonesty at times.

Queen Elizabeth’s sometime Lord Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon muses in his 1601 essay “Of Truth” the following, which is relevant to us in trying to understand Paroles and other such rogues, and perhaps ourselves: “it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself.” [26]

Lies, in Bacon’s further estimation, knit people together in a web of pleasurable, optimistic deceit, and they bolster those same people’s self-estimation. The truth makes us feel common and limited, but the dim light of falsity shows us to ourselves and others as things precious and fascinating. Still, since Bacon’s essays never try to exhaust their subject matter, there is likely more to the business of lies than this.

That “more to it” seems to be what troubles Paroles: the “corrupt love of the lie” to which Bacon alludes is something of a mystery, like original sin itself, and perhaps all one can do to cover up the abyss of the thing is to point towards some concept like original sin or the inherent depravity of mankind. The Second Lord Dumaine, overhearing Paroles, suggests as much with his incredulous question, “Is it possible he should know / what he is and be that he is?” (1011, 4.1.41-42)

Momentarily, the fierce captors set upon Paroles and blindfold him, as planned. Shakespeare has some linguistic fun as the soldiers bombard their captive with nonsensical, fake-Russian phonemes—good old polyglot Europe! Their purpose, as the Second Lord Dumaine has already explained at the outset of Act 4, Scene 1, is not to be comprehensible, but instead to be ferocious and put up a wall between Paroles and his hopes for deliverance. They are the sauce to his plate of fear, and underlying that fear is Paroles’s own insight into his nature.

Well, language is a surprisingly varied and effective means of miscommunication: “Oscorbidulchos volivorco!” (1011, 4.1.75) is more than clear enough to get Paroles to offer his captors nothing less than total knowledge: he promises to “discover that which shall undo the Florentine” and blurts out, “all the secrets of our camp I’ll show” (1011, 4.1.68, 80). If Paroles has any capacity for shame, his humiliation must be all but complete.

Act 4, Scene 2 (1012-14, As planned, Diana demands and receives Bertram’s precious ring as the price for yielding to his entreaties; the bed-trick trap is now set.)

Bertram employs the rhetoric of youthful dalliance and passion, which we know as carpe diem talk. [27] “If the quick fire of youth light not your mind,” he says to Diana, “You are no maiden but a monument” (1012, 4.2.5-6). He also casts himself in the role of the medieval chivalric knight, promising himself to the lady he loves and leaving behind his unloved wife. [28] But Diana, whose very name reminds us of the chastest goddess among the Greeks, is more than a match for Bertram’s seductive words.

Thanks to Helen’s assistance, Diana easily procures the ring from Bertram, and does her part in Helen’s scheme. She promises Bertram that she will give him a ring in turn along with her chastity (1013, 4.2.53-65). Diana is very much a believer in the logic of the play’s title “all’s well that ends well”: she has no plans to marry, but doesn’t mind helping Helen: “Only in this disguise I think’t no sin / To cozen him that would unjustly win” (1014, 4.2.75-76).

Act 4, Scene 3 (1014-20, News reaches the Duke of Florence’s court that Helen has apparently died during her pilgrimage; Bertram arranges to return to Roussillon, believing that he has successfully seduced Diana; Paroles, frightened half to death, is exposed as a liar and coward willing to badmouth his colleagues and tell his captors anything they want to know; those colleagues mock him and leave him behind; in soliloquy, Paroles expresses his desire to go on living in spite of his shame and humiliation.)

Does the shallow Bertram now feel the sting of conscience? That seems to be what the second Lord Dumaine thinks at the beginning of the scene, as he discusses with his brother Bertram’s dishonorable plot against the honor of Diana. Upon reading his mother’s letter, Bertram, we are told, “changed almost into another man” (1014, 4.3.5). The First Lord Dumaine also reports, and apparently believes, that Helen has passed away at the end of her pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James (Saint Jacques le Grand, in French). He has this information mainly from Helen’s own letters in the service of her deception.

The First Lord Dumaine makes a wonderfully apt philosophical observation along the lines of Feste’s “Virtue that trans- / gresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but / patched with virtue.” [29] The First Lord says in reflecting on Bertram, “The web of our life is of a mingled / yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if / our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair / if they were not cherished by our virtues” (1015, 4.3.70-73). [30]

Bertram, as he tells us himself, has been extremely busy taking his leave of the Duke, burying his supposedly deceased wife, writing to his mother and planning to go home and visit her, and other things. He is still looking forward to Paroles’s unmasking, which isn’t far off. This trick parallels the trick that is being played upon Bertram himself, though he does not know it: a good example of dramatic irony since we, the audience, know something Bertram doesn’t.

The soldiers interrogate Paroles to find out how much he’s willing to tell them, and he outdoes himself even to the point of punctiliousness, revealing everything he can in the most precise detail, and generally badmouthing all of his colleagues, even—and especially—Bertram, about whom he fabricates a ridiculous back story: “’A was a botcher’s [Norton gloss: clothes mender’s] prentice in Paris, / from whence he was whipped for getting the sheriff’s fool / with child, a dumb innocent that could not say him nay” (1017, 4.3.181-83). It turns out that Paroles even wrote a letter to Diana warning him of Bertram’s bad intentions and dishonesty.

After defaming the Lords Dumaine (much to their amusement), Paroles is finally unblindfolded, and, after being threatened with execution, he realizes what has happened. He is utterly humiliated as the Lords Dumaine and others take their leave of him with taunts and promises to tell everyone they know what a shameful fool he is.

Paroles’s response to this humiliating episode is priceless: first, a thoroughly unapologetic utterance, “Who cannot be crushed with a plot?” (1020, 4.3.308) But the two key things he says to conclude the scene are as follows: “Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live” (1020, 4.3.316-17). [31] And again, “There’s place and means for every man alive” (1020, 4.3.322). He has been found out as a liar, a coward, and a knave, but there’s still a place for him in a saucy and often dishonest world—evidently, it’s big enough to accommodate even a rascal like Paroles. [32]

As the Norton editors imply (966-67), Paroles is not the kind of mover and shaker that Helen is. She puts her body behind her words, and Paroles is all talk and no action, no body, and ultimately nobody important. The Norton editors describe Paroles’ method well when they suggest that he keeps introducing himself in ever-diminished ways into an environment that obviously has no love for him (Introduction 967). Shame keeps taking him down another peg, but once there, he acclimates to it, feeling “Safest in shame” (1020, 4.3.321).

The world is by no means perfect, but at least it can be patient. There is opportunity for many talents, not all of them honorable or conducive to exalted status. Paroles, we might add, is useful as a touchstone against which to measure one’s own honor, and honor, we should remember from what the King has said about it in praising Bertram’s departed father (977, 1.2.30-48), has much to do with the willingness to speak chastely and modestly and to back up one’s words with actions.

Act 4, Scene 4 (1020-21, Helen informs Diana of the plan’s next step: they and the Widow will make their way to Marseilles, where the King is and where the disbanded army is headed.)

Helen fills in Diana and her mother about the next part of her plan: they must go to Marseilles. To allay any residual anxiety in Diana, Helen tells her that “All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown. / Whate’er the course, the end is the renown” (1021, 4.4.35-36). What she’s implying is that while we may forget the details that conduce towards an achievement, what matters is the virtuous result. The chaos of youthful desire must give way to the order of responsible maturity, and that is what this plan will facilitate.

Act 4, Scene 5 (1021-23, the Countess and Lafeu praise the Clown; the Countess, thinking Helen is dead, gets word that the King is on his way to Roussillon from Marseille and that Bertram has just arrived home; with the Countess’s approval, Lafeu’s daughter Maudlin is set to marry the “widower” Bertram.)

Lafeu and the Countess are still mourning the loss of Helen, or so they think. The Clown engages in some parrying of witticisms with Lafeu and lays claim to a kind of virtue we know he doesn’t possess: “I am for the house with the narrow gate” (1022, 4.5.43), says he, imputing himself to be a fine Christian even as he bandies slang terms for genitalia.

The Countess thinks of the Lavache the Clown as rather irritating, but Lafeu considers his bitter foolishness appropriate (1022, 4.5.53-57). It seems appropriate to the time, too, that Lafeu plans to have his own daughter marry Bertram now that the young man is supposedly a widower. Since, as Lafeu points out, this is a good shift for dissipating the King’s anger over Bertram’s previous disrespect in absconding from the Court, the Countess finds the plan unobjectionable.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (1023-24, Since the King has left Marseilles for Roussillon, Helen instead gives her petition to a gentleman-falconer to deliver to the King there.)

Helen proposes to petition the King in Marseille, but he is not there and has gone to Roussillon. She asks a traveling gentleman—a falconer, in this instance—to convey her petition to that place since he will arrive there first, and he readily agrees (1024, 5.1.29-34).

Act 5, Scene 2 (1024-25, Paroles, arriving at Roussillon, asks for and receives a place at Lafeu’s table: he is diminished, but resilient.)

Paroles arrives at Roussillon and must ingratiate himself there. He must first encounter Lavache, and declares, “I am now, sir, / muddied in Fortune’s mood and smell somewhat strong of / her strong displeasure” (1024, 5.2.3-5). Lavache takes the metaphor literally and requests that he stand farther off. But Paroles, in his reduced circumstances, can’t afford to get too upset over this insult, and Lafeu soon arrives.

Lafeu gives Paroles a bit of petty cash and asks pointedly what he has done to offend Lady Fortune so badly. The unfortunate man at least has the presence of mind to announce himself by name. The gesture produces surprisingly good results, as Lafeu exclaims, “Cox my passion, / give me your hand! How does your drum?” (1025, 5.2.36-37) Paroles must be surprised to find his tenuous connection with Lafeu—they met a few times in Act 2, Scene 3, and the second meeting did not go well—resulting in such a friendly welcome, as if he were a family member.

As it turns out, Lafeu is generous enough to take the disgraced Paroles into his service. He informs Paroles, “I had / talk of you last night. Though you are a / fool and a knave, you shall eat” (1025, 5.2.45-47). Paroles’s animalistic desire simply to live has found its material support in the decency of the wealthy French Lord who, as Paroles himself has reminded him in this scene, first found him out as a pretender.

Act 5, Scene 3 (1025-33, The King proves willing to pardon Bertram’s offense, and he accedes to the marriage between the young lord and Lafeu’s daughter; Bertram passes to Lafeu a ring, but the King, Lafeu, and the Countess recognize that it belonged to Helen; Bertram lies about its provenance, and is promptly arrested on suspicion of killing Helen; a Gentleman enters and delivers the accusatory letter that Diana had written at Helen’s instruction; Diana herself then enters and claims that Bertram promised to marry her—a claim evasively seconded by Paroles;(SYNOPSIS
CONTINUES …)

The King shows his grief for Helen, and informs the Countess that he has “forgiven and forgotten all” with regard to Bertram (1026, 5.3.9). The young man will be only “a stranger, not an offender” (1026, 5.3.26). Should we believe Bertram when he says that now that Helen is gone, he sincerely loves her? (1026-27, 5.3.44-54) The King holds it a decent thing to say, but it obviously does not altogether excuse Bertram’s conduct: “That thou didst love her strikes some scores away / From the great count” (1027, 5.3.56-57).

In any case, it’s time for Bertram marry Lafeu’s daughter Maudlin. Now we are on to “the double ring device” (1027-end, 5.3.74ff) by which the play’s contradictions will be resolved. Bertram gives Lafeu the ring that Diana, at the behest of Helen, had given him at their supposed tryst. Lafeu recognizes the very same ring as the one he saw on Helen’s finger before she left court: “such a ring as this, / The last that ere I took her leave at court, / I saw upon her finger” (1027, 5.3.78-80). The Countess recognizes the ring as Helen’s, too.

To make matters worse, the King himself takes a look at the ring and realizes it is the very one he had given Helen as a token to use if she ever needed his help. He now suspects that Bertram has done away with Helen since she told him before she left the court that she would never part with the ring, the King tells Bertram, “Unless she gave it to yourself in bed or sent it us / Upon her great disaster” (1028, 5.3.110-12).

Bertram lies to the King, claiming that the ring was thrown from the casement of a woman who was enamored of him, but he is promptly arrested, under suspicion for Helen’s murder.

Now the Florentine falconer shows up with Diana’s petition (which Helen had given him), and when the King reads it aloud (1029, 5.3.139-45), it accuses Bertram of seducing her. She has followed him to court, she says, to obtain justice. Lafeu immediately withdraws his offer of marriage on his daughter’s behalf, and Diana soon walks onto the scene along with her mother, and declares herself (1029, 5.3.159-60). Bertram re-enters, and tries to dismiss the entire affair as the invention of “a fond and desp’rate creature” (1029, 5.3.177).

Diana next asks the King to question Bertram whether “he does think / He had not my virginity” (1030, 5.3.184-85). The response from the young lord is that Diana was “a common gamester to the camp.” In other words, he claims he met her as a prostitute. To counter this charge, Diana produces Bertram’s ancestral ring: “Oh, behold this ring, / Whose high respect and rich validity / Did lack a parallel” (1030, 5.3.190-92). Would a man give such a ring to a prostitute? she asks.

The Countess is certain that Bertram has married Diana: the ring, she says, proves it (1030, 5.3.194-98). Paroles is called in by Diana to witness the truth of her claims, and before he comes forward, Bertram admits that he tried to seduce Diana, and says that through her insistence, “she got the ring, / And I had that which any inferior might / At market price have bought” (1030, 5.3.216-18).

So Bertram did, as we in the audience already know, give Diana his ancestral ring in exchange for her promise to sleep with him, and he accepted her less precious ring—which we know to be the one that Helen gave to her. This latter is the ring that the King had given to Helen as an “SOS” token in case of emergency, and that Bertram unwittingly used as a gift for Maudlin, which got him in trouble when the King and others recognized it as Helen’s.

Paroles gives his turgid testimony when asked if he saw Bertram together with Helen: “He loved her, sir, and loved her not” (1031, 5.3.245), and then Diana perplexes and enrages the King by refusing to clear up for him how she came by the less expensive ring in the first place. This is the ring that the King knows he himself gave to Helen at court, and he is ready to have Diana arrested for failing to speak plainly about its provenance.

Diana states that Bertram is “guilty and he is not guilty,” and while he considers her no maid, she knows that she is a maid (1032, 5.3.283, 284-85). The real riddle, however, is the following: “He knows himself my bed he hath defiled, / And at that time he got his wife with child. / Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick. / … one that’s dead is quick” (1032, 5.3.294-97).

Helen now enters and clears up everything at long last, pointing out to Bertram that his conditions have been fulfilled (1032, 5.3.303-08). She is pregnant by him, and she is able to point to the ancestral ring that Diana has already produced. The astonished Bertram says only, “If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly / I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever, dearly” (1032, 5.3.309-10). We may gather that “ever, ever” means “always and very” rather than “very, very” (a double asseveration that would leave out the time frame).

Either way, we are left to ask, is Bertram’s expression of emotion sincere, or is it a hollow declamation to suit the will of a royal patron whom the young man has learned better than to oppose? [33] The pressing need to register and reflect on that question is essentially what makes All’s Well That Ends Well a “problem” comedy rather than one of the sunnier productions that Shakespeare penned in that genre.

Diana’s fate is sunny enough, though, as the King grants her a deal similar to the one he granted to Helen when she cured him of his disease: she may choose the husband of her fancy, and he will add the dower for her.

In any case, the King soon pronounces the final variation on the play’s title: “All yet seems well, and if it end so meet, / The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet” (1033, 5.3.326-27). The question of ethics is addressed in the sense that deception has been turned to good ends. What Bertram thought he was doing was not in fact what he ends up having done. Only in a comic universe, of course, does one get away with following such a formula, wittingly or otherwise.

Th offense forgotten, or at least forgiven, the result seems to be a livable accommodation between Bertram and Helen, and a rich dower for whomever Diana may choose to marry. Seldom (outside of Nietzsche’s needling prose) has the work of civilization been so sorely in need of that ruthless “forgetting” necessary to its perpetuation. [34] The sweet puts us out of mind of the bitter, like a mellow glass of red wine at the end of a difficult day.

The rings, we might take note, have both served their purpose: Helen’s ring has been an active, dynamic symbol of her virtue, and in the end it helps to convince the King as judge that her side of the story is the truth. Bertram’s ring, meant to symbolize his patrilineal nobility and steadfastness since it has been passed down to him for generations, ends up both impeaching him as faithless and serving as a token that offers him a chance at redemption.

The King’s concluding lines function as an epilogue, which begins, “The King’s a beggar now the play is done. / All is well ended if this suit be won” (1033, 5.3.328-29). By “this suit,” the actor means his own plea for a favorable reception. It’s a common move in Shakespeare’s epilogues: the actors solicit the positive judgment of the audiences that keep them thriving.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] A Renaissance humanist education was supposed to be convertible into active virtue. As Sir Philip Sidney writes in his 1580-81 treatise, “The Defence of Poesie,” the aim of learning is “well doing” and not merely “well knowing.” Project Gutenberg. Accessed 1/21/2024.

[2] Gertrude advises Hamlet, “Do not forever with thy veiled lids / Seek for thy noble father in the dust …” (364, 1.2.70-71). Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447.

[3] Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. See 411, 1.1.232-33.

[4] The term miles gloriosus comes from the title of a comedy by the Roman author Plautus. It means “braggart soldier.” See Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus. Perseus Digital Library. 11/2/2024. The name of the original braggart is Pyrgopolinices.

[5] Helen would no doubt agree with Cassius in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 288-343. See 293, 1.2.140-41.

[6] Lavache’s witticisms may be compared with those of Feste in Twelfth Night, which also take the carpe diem view of life: “In delay there lies no plenty, / Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. / Youth’s a stuff will not endure” (759, 2.3.48-50). Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97.

[7] See 1 Corinthians 7:8-9. ⁸Therefore I say unto the unmarried, and unto the widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I do.⁹But if they cannot abstain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than toburn.

Geneva Bible, 1599. biblegateway.com. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[8] See the Norton marginal gloss on pg. 979 for “in,” which here means “gather in,” as in “harvest.”

[9] Touchstone seems to take much the same view when it comes to the prospective conduct of his rustic girlfriend, Audrey: “as a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the / forehead of a married man more honorable than the bare / brow of a bachelor” (708, 3.3.49-51). In Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731.

[10] Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. See 788, 2.2.48.

[11] On the state of medicine in Shakespeare’s era, see Esther French’s August 23, 2016 article “Balancing the body and consulting the heavens: Medicine in Shakespeare’s time.” Folger Shakespeare Library. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[12] See Frye, Northrop. The Myth of Deliverance: Reflections on Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1983. ISBN-10: 0-8020-6503-1. In Ch. 2, “The Reversal of Energy,” Frye writes while discussing All’s Well That Ends Well, “As in the romances especially, Shakespeare seems to emphasize, even to go out of his way to emphasize, the most primitive and archaic folktale aspects of his story” (46).

[13] Lavache is sending up courtliness at its worst, to be sure. For the antidote to such depictions, see Baldassare Castiglione’s explanation of la sprezzatura in The courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio diuided into foure books, trans. T. Hoby, or Gutenberg’s 1902 Opdycke translation. Castiglione’s Count Lodovico explains the term thus: a courtier must be able “to avoid affectation to the uttermost and as it were a very sharp and dangerous rock; and, to use possibly a new word, to practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.”

[14] The King essentially says that he is the central bestower of nobility. On the related concept and importance of legitimacy and illegitimacy in Tudor England, see “Illegitimacy in 15th-Century England.” From warsoftheroses.com. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[15] In his poem “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” Tennyson writes, “Kind hearts are more than coronets, / And simple faith than Norman blood.” That is a good summation of the French King’s speech to Bertram about what truly constitutes nobility. Wikisource copy of Poems, Tennyson 1843. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[16] Shakespeare’s naming of his foppish character “Paroles,” which is French for “words,” is another reminder of the centrality of words in Elizabethan culture. Shakespeare knows the era’s appreciation of language in all areas of life, but he is also concerned to emphasize the potential in language for misleading others, covering up abuses of power, and so forth. His way of handling language indicates at once profound admiration and perpetual wariness, even distrust.

[17] See Norton Shakespeare present volume, Intro. 965. Sophocles. At the end of Oedipus the King, the Chorus says, “Therefore, while our eyes wait to see the final destined day, we must call no mortal happy until he has crossed life’s border free from pain.” Trans. Richard Jebb. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 11/2/2024. The Greek runs, “ὥστε θνητὸν ὄντα κείνην τὴν τελευταίαν ἰδεῖν / ἡμέραν ἐπισκοποῦντα μηδέν᾽ ὀλβίζειν, πρὶν ἂν / τέρμα τοῦ βίου περάσῃ μηδὲν ἀλγεινὸν παθών.”

[18] It’s an ancient notion that long failure to participate in war renders a whole people weak. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus spoke to the centrality of war in Spartan culture. See Ancient Warfare 97A. Accessed 11/2/2024. In Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche writes, “Nothing could make us less envious than the moral cow and the plump happiness of a clean conscience. The man who has renounced war has renounced a grand life.” Trans. Anthony Ludovici. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[19] The “magic ring device” is ancient, and figures heavily in medieval romance literature, including the Arthurian legends. See Wendy Doniger’s The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry. Oxford UP, 2017. ISBN-13: 978-0190267117. Aside from All’s Well, we might recall that rings are significant in The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline, and The Comedy of Errors. This is a good place to mention another folk device that is at play in All’s Well: according to Geoffrey Bullough, this play “is based on one of the most popular of all folk-motifs, the tale of Impossibilities. In scores of fairy-tales the hero (heroine) is faced with an intolerable dilemma, to sacrifice his life or wooing or else to perform some incredible feat of warfare, travel, adventure, endurance or ingenuity…. One world-wide species of such stories is the tale of the bride or wife subjected to a series of tests” (376). See Bullough, Geoffrey, editor. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. II. The Comedies, 1597-1603. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1958.

[20] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 917-69. See 951, 4.1.91-93: “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him.”

[21] On the shrine of St. James, see Catedral de Santiago. catedraldesantiago.es. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[22] Compare this episode to the Gadshill robbery joke that Prince Hal and his friends play on Falstaff. Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 629-95. See 635, 1.2.108-68, 646ff: 2.1-2.2.

[23] The appearance of sexual impropriety is often used as a tool, as in Shakespeare’s use of the popular medieval “bed trick,” as seen in All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. See Seattle Shakespeare’s essay “What is a bed trick?” Accessed 9/18/2024.

[24] Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. 206: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[25] Wilde, Oscar. “The Critic as Artist: With Some Remarks upon the Importance of Doing Nothing.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/7/2024. The statement by Gilbert is, “When man acts he is a puppet. When he describes he is a poet.”

[26] See Bacon, Sir Francis. The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Francis Ld. Verulam, Viscount of St. Albans. Gutenberg e-text. For the bible passage, see Luke 18:8: “I tell you he will avenge them quickly: but when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Geneva Bible, 1599. biblegateway.com. Both accessed 11/2/2024.

[27] Horace’s phrase “carpe diem” comes from the conclusion of his Ode 1.11, “dum loquimur, fugerit invida / aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.” (Commentary author’s translation: “While we talk, spiteful time shall have flown still more: seize the present day, and heed the future as little as you can.”) Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[28] One thinks of the complicated loves of Arthurian characters such as Tristan and Isolde, or Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. See The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights by James Knowles, 1862. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/2/2024. See also the website Arthurian Legend.

[29] Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97. See 751, 1.5.41-43.

[30] Samuel Johnson was right to say in “Preface to Shakespeare” that “Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men ….” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/2/2024.

[31] This is a fascinating line in that once his failure to inhabit and mime the values of the heroic military code becomes obvious, Paroles appeals to something very like a “life force,” a pure desire to keep on living, no matter the circumstances and consequences he may face. Perhaps this force is best able to manifest itself when such ideologies or “codes” are stripped away, leaving little behind but the thriving, pulsing organism and its need to live.

[32] Prince Hal makes the same point about Falstaff when he excuses the latter’s pretention to have slain Harry Hotspur: “For my part, if a lie may do thee grace / I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have” (694, 5.4.151-52). Hal does not hear the shocking admission that comes not long before this, which occurs when the irresponsible knight acknowledges to himself how badly he has botched his commission: “I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered; there’s / not three of my hundred and fifty / left alive, and they are for / the town’s end to beg during life” (690, 5.3.35-37). But towards the end of II Henry IV, and then in Henry V, Falstaff’s life takes a darker, more tragic turn when the new King demonstrates that he no longer has time for a misbehaving old friend. See Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 629-95.

[33] If Bertram’s declaration is hollow, this marriage will only be a little better, perhaps, than Measure for Measure’s forced match between the gadfly Lucio and the prostitute he impregnated and ignored until Duke Vincentio forces him to marry her. Shakespeare, William. Measure for Measure. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 901-59. See 959, 5.1.503-27. Samuel Johnson, commenting on his edition of the play, writes scathingly of Bertram: “I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helen as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to his happiness.” See Johson, Samuel. The plays of William Shakespeare: in eight volumes / with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators ; to which are added notes by Sam. Johnson v.3. E-page #409/pg. 399. London, 1765. HathiTrust. Accessed 11/3/2024.

[34] Nietzsche stresses the importance of “forgetting” in relation to the conception of civilization. See “Nietzsche on Why It Is Also Important to Forget.” The Dewdrop. Accessed 11/2/2024.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Comedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Comedies