6. All's Well That Ends Well, by William Shakespeare, pp. 125-144

Act V

[Scene I. -- Marseilles.]

Helena, Diana, and the widow have arrived in Marseilles, only to be informed by the gentleman they encounter, whom Helena recognizes from the Parisian court, that the king has already left and is on his way to Rossillion. When the widow expresses disappointment, the ever-patient Helena assures her once again that "All's well that ends well yet." When she learns that the gentleman is also on his way to Rossillion, she gives him the letter they plan to deliver to the king and says that they will follow him as swiftly as they can.

[Scene II. -- Rossillion. The Count's palace.] 

A bedraggled Parolles asks Lavatch (who is named here for the first time) to give Lafew a letter. When Parolles says he smells of Fortune's displeasure, Lavatch takes the metaphor literally and begins joking about the way Parolles smells. Lafew enters, and Parolles directs his appeal to him when Lavatch leaves. Parolles credits Lafew with being the first person to see him as he really is, but their conversation is interrupted by the trumpets announcing the king's arrival. Lafew tells Parolles that he has already heard about his unmasking and downfall: "though you are a fool and a knave you shall eat." 


[Scene III. -- The same.] 


The king enters, accompanied by the countess, Lafew, the Dumaine brothers, and the retinue. The king tells the countess of his sorrow for Helena's death and blames Bertram's "folly." The countess pleads for him to recognize it as "Natural rebellion done i' the blade of youth," and the king assures her that he has "forgiven and forgotten all." Lafew opines that Bertram did the most harm to himself:

                                      He lost a wife 

Whose beauty did astonish the survey 

Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive; 

Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn'd to serve 

Humbly called mistress. 

The king sends for Bertram, and asks Lafew if Bertram has accepted the offer to marry Lafew's daughter. Lafew says that Bertram will do whatever the king wishes. The king says, "Then shall we have a match," and notes that he has received letters, presumably from the duke of Florence, about Bertram's valor. 


Bertram enters and begs the king's pardon, which the king grants, saying they should look forward and not backward. He asks if Bertram knows Lafew's daughter, whose name is Maudlin. (Perhaps a variant spelling of Magdalen -- the Oxford college of that name is pronounced "Maudlin.") Bertram says that he does, and expresses his admiration of her, admitting that he has previously been too blind to see the virtues of women "whom all men prais'd" -- i.e., Helena. The king urges him to forget about Helena and to "Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin." 


Bertram gives Lafew a ring to deliver to Maudlin, but Lafew recognizes it as one he had seen Helena wearing. Bertram denies that it was Helena's, but when the king sees it he recognizes it as one he had given her, telling Helena that if she ever needed his help she should send it to him. Bertram persists in his denial: "The ring was never hers." But the countess also recognizes it: "Son, on my life, / I have seen her wear it, and she reckon'd it / At her life's rate." 


Bertram then claims that it had been thrown to him from a window in Florence by a noblewoman who thought that they would marry, but when he explained that he couldn't wed her she refused to take back the ring. The king doesn't believe this lie: Helena "call'd the saints to surety / That she would never put it from her finger / Unless she gave it to yourself in bed, / Where you have never come" or if she needed the king's help in some "great disaster." 


Bertram insists, "She never saw it," and even when the king orders him arrested says

                                          If you shall prove 

This ring was ever hers, you shall as easy 

Prove that I husbanded her bed in Florence, 

Where yet she never was.

He is led away by guards. 


The gentleman whom Helena met in Marseilles now enters, and delivers the letter she asked him to give the king. It is from Diana, and tells the king that Bertram left Florence without marrying her, as he promised. When Lafew hears this, he vows to "buy me a son-in-law in a fair, ... I'll none of him." The king agrees that the discovery is well-timed as far as the marriage between Bertram and Lafew's daughter is concerned. He orders that Bertram be brought back and Diana allowed to enter. 


Accompanied by the widow, Diana enters, and Bertram is forced to admit that he knows them. But when she claims the right to call him her husband he calls her "a fond and desp'rate creature / Whom sometime I have laugh'd with" and "a common gamester to the camp." Whereupon Diana produces his ring. The countess observes her son's blushes and attests to the ring's significance: "This is his wife; / That ring's a thousand proofs." Diana also asserts that she can produce a witness, "but loath am to produce / So bad an instrument; his name's Parolles." 


Bertram scoffs at the value of any testimony of a man like Parolles, "Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth." And he admits that he "boarded her i' th' wanton way of youth" and that she persuaded him to give her the ring: 

                              she got the ring, 

And I had that which any inferior might 

At market-price have bought. 

Diana tells Bertram that she'll return his ring if he returns hers. "I have it not," Bertram says. And when the king asks about hers, she says it was like the one the king has on his finger: Helena's ring. "This ring was his of late," the king says, and Diana replies, "And this was it I gave him, being abed." Bertram is forced to confess that the story about the ring's being tossed to him from a window is a lie. 


Parolles enters, and in his usual wordy way testifies that he acted as a go-between for Bertram and Diana. The king grows impatient with Parolles' testimony, but when he questions Diana about the ring she says is hers, her answers are so evasive that he says, "Unless thou tell'st me where thou hadst this ring / Thou diest within the hour." Diana stands her ground, and when the king orders her to prison, she sends her mother to fetch Helena. She says of Bertram, 

He knows himself my bed he hath defil'd; 
And at that time he got his wife with child. 
Dead though she be she feels her young one kick. 
So there's my riddle: one that's dead is quick, 
And now behold the meaning. 

The widow enters with Helena, and everyone is duly thunderstruck. 

When Helena proclaims, "'Tis but the shadow of a wife you see; / The name and not the thing," Bertram insists, "Both, both. O pardon!" She tells him, "when I was like this maid I found you wondrous kind," perhaps referring to a time anterior to the action of the play, because we have never seen Bertram being any kind of kind. She points out his ring, and shows him the letter in which he promises to call her his wife when she can get the ring and carry his child. "This is done; / Will you be mine now you are doubly won?" And in response Bertram vows to "love her dearly, ever, ever dearly." 


Lafew is so overcome with emotion that he asks Parolles to lend him a handkerchief. The king promises to pay Diana's dowry when she chooses a husband, and utters the tag line of the play: 

All yet seems well, and if it end so meet, 
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. 

We are not supposed to think past the end of the play, of course. Bertram has been an insufferable git through the whole thing, and his "redemption" consists of a few lines after having lied for the better part of even the last act. Realistically, we can't expect much of a marriage to come out of this mess of contrivances. But that's the point: All's Well That Ends Well is in no way realistic. It's a concoction designed to point a moral about patience and virtue overcoming selfishness and deception. A fairy tale. Only because we expect more sophistication from Shakespeare do we have any right to be dissatisfied with what he has given us. 

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An excerpt from the final scene of the play in the 1981 BBC TV production. Celia Johnson as the countess, Ian Charleson as Bertram, Michael Hordern as Lafew, Angela Down as Helena, Peter Jeffrey as Parolles, Donald Sinden as the king, Rosemary Leach as the widow, Pippa Guard as Diana, and Valentine Dyall as the gentleman met in Marseilles: 

3. All's Well That Ends Well, by William Shakespeare, pp. 34-72

Act II

[Scene I. -- Paris. The King's palace.]

The king is saying farewell to two groups of young noblemen leaving for the war: one group to fight for Florence, the other for Siena. One of them tells the king that they hope to find him in good health when they return, but the king assures him that there's no chance that he'll be cured. He also warns them to watch out for Italian girls.


As the king withdraws to talk to the other group, one of the departing lords tells Bertram of his regrets that Bertram won't be joining them. Bertram says he has been commanded to stay in Paris because he is too young; he is bitter about it, and bursts out, "By heaven, I'll steal away!" Parolles urges him to do so, and tells the lords to look out for "one Captain Spurio," who bears a scar on his left cheek from a wound Parolles claims to have given him.

When the lords depart, Parolles asks Bertram what he will do, and Bertram admits that he doesn't plan to "steal away" -- he's going to stay in Paris. They leave, and Lafew enters to talk to the king. He has met with Helena and tells him that she brings a promising medicine for his ailment. The king is, of course, dubious, but Lafew persuades him to see her and ushers her in. Helena explains that the medicine was devised by her father, Gerard de Narbon. The king is acquainted with her father, but he is still reluctant to try anything new after the learned physicians have given up on him. She insists that it "can do no hurt to try," and when he still holds out, she says she will let herself be tortured to death if the cure fails. And she asks that if she succeeds, the king will arrange for her to marry the man of her choosing, assuring him that she won't be so arrogant enough "To choose from forth the royal blood of France." He agrees to the bargain.

[Scene II. -- Rossillion. The Count's palace.] 

The countess and Lavatch have a little dialogue in which the clown shows his acquaintance with the affectations of the court, including the all-purpose interjection "O Lord, sir!" Then the countess sends Lavatch off to Paris with a message for Helena.

[Scene III. -- Paris. The King's palace.]

Lafew tells Bertram of the remarkable cure that Helena has just effected, though his account is continually interrupted by the blatherings of Parolles. The king then enters with Helena, exhibiting his restored vitality. He then summons several "noble bachelors" so she may choose her husband. Helena scrutinizes four of them and rejects them. (Lafew, apparently unable to hear what they're saying, mistakenly believes that the men are refusing her.) Finally she approaches Bertram and proclaims him her choice. But Bertram indignantly refuses: "A poor physician's daughter my wife!" The king insists that if the stumbling block is her lower birth, he has the power to grant her any title he chooses. But Bertram stubbornly continues to refuse, only making the king angrier. Helena interrupts to say that restoring his health is enough reward for her; the king doesn't need to try to force Bertram into marrying her. But the king is insulted by Bertram's defiance and threatens to banish him from the court. Bertram then acquiesces to his wishes.

"Take her by the hand / And tell her she is thine," the king orders. "I take her by the hand," Bertram replies, though he doesn't follow through on the rest of the king's command. This seems enough, however, to satisfy the king. He tells them the wedding will take place that night. The wedding feast will have to wait for the arrival of "absent friends."

Everyone exits except Parolles and Lafew, who quarrel when Parolles takes offense to Lafew's reference to Bertram as Parolles' "master." Annoyed at Parolles' foolishness, Lafew takes his leave. Parolles blusters a bit about the "scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord" and vows to beat the old man if they meet again. But just as he makes this vow, Lafew returns with the news that the wedding has taken place and that Parolles now has "a new mistress," which irritates Parolles but doesn't provoke him to violence. Lafew continues to mock Parolles: "You were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate. You are a vagabond and no true traveller." And once again he takes his leave of the fuming Parolles.

Bertram enters and tells Parolles that he has no intention of sleeping with his new wife: "I'll to the Tuscan wars and never bed her." He'll send Helena back to Rossillion to stay with his mother. "Tomorrow / I'll to the wars, she to her single sorrow." He and Parolles exit.

Helena enters with Lavatch, who has brought letters from the countess to her and to Bertram. Parolles enters and takes more abuse from the clown before telling Helena that Bertram has been called away on business tonight, but he assures her that the delay will only make the consummation of their marriage sweeter -- a sentiment probably of his own devising, since it's unlikely Bertram would have come up with something like that. They exit, and Bertram enters with Lafew, who is trying to tell Bertram what sort of fool Parolles is. Bertram insists, "he is very great in knowledge, and accordingly valiant." Lafew gives up, realizing that Bertram is beyond persuading of the contrary.

Parolles returns to take Bertram aside and tell him that Helena has been informed that he has been called away. Bertram says that everything is ready for their departure. He then asks Parolles if there are some hard feelings between him and Lafew. Parolles replies, "I know not how I have deserved to run into my lord's displeasure," to which Lafew says that Parolles ran "into't, boots and spurs and all, like him that leap'd into the custard" -- a reference to a jester's performance at the Lord Mayor's Feasts in London, the footnote explains. He leaves, advising Bertram once again not to take Parolles seriously: "there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is in his clothes." Parolles calls Lafew "An idle lord," but Bertram dissents. "I do know him well; and common speech / Gives him a worthy pass." This is one of the few glimmers of intelligence that we have seen from Bertram so far.

Helena enters to say that the king wishes to speak with Bertram privately. Bertram tells her that she should return to Rossillion, and gives her a letter to give his mother. She asks his pardon, and he impatiently brushes her off. "Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss," she points out, but he doesn't respond to the hint, so she bids him farewell. After she has left, he says contemptuously, "Go thou toward home, where I will never come / Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum," and departs with a flourish of bravado from Parolles.

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There are, not unexpectedly, very few videos of productions of the play available online. YouTube has some excerpts from amateur productions, as well as backstage interviews with performers and crew of the 2008 Stratford Festival production. The only professionally performed scenes I've been able to find are from the 1981 BBC-TV production, posted on YouTube by an admirer of the late actor Ian Charleson, who played Bertram. The cast also includes Angela Down as Helena, Michael Hordern as Lafew, Peter Jeffrey as Parolles, Donald Sinden as the King of France, and Paul Brooke as Lavatch. The following are Scenes III, IV, and V from Act II:

 

2. All's Well That Ends Well, by William Shakespeare, pp. 1-33

Act I

Scene I. -- [Rossillion. The Count's Palace.]

Bertram, the young count of Rossillion, bids his mother goodbye as he leaves for the court of the king of France. Because of his father's death, and because he is still a minor, he is a ward of the king. Lafew, a French lord who is to accompany Bertram to Paris, assures the countess that the king will treat Bertram as if he were his own son.

The countess asks Lafew about the king's health, and is told that the physicians have abandoned their attempts to find a cure for the king's illness, an abscess. The countess observes that her own ward, Helena, has lost her father, a noted physician named Gerard de Narbon, who might well have been able to find a cure for the king. Helena begins to cry, and the countess consoles her. Bertram interrupts to take his leave, and his mother gives him some parting words of advice, then leaves. Bertram tells Helena to look after his mother and departs with Lafew.

Left alone, Helena reveals that her tears are as much for her distress at Bertram's leaving as for her father, though she is conscious that her lower status prevents her from marrying Bertram. Parolles, who is to accompany Bertram to Paris, now enters. Helena knows Parolles is a fool and a coward, but talking with him lightens her mood. He brings up the topic of virginity, and she asks his advice as a soldier on defending hers. He argues that without the loss of virginity, no more virgins would be born, so she might as well surrender. She rejects his counsel, but turns the topic to Bertram, whom she imagines as flirting with the women at court in terms drawn from love poetry. She almost reveals her love for Bertram to Parolles, but catches herself in the nick of time.

A page comes to tell Parolles that Bertram is waiting for him. She jokes about Parolles' martial bravado, and he urges her to get a good husband and departs. She remains, ponders the difficulty of being in love with someone not her social equal, hints at her plan to follow Bertram to Paris and use one of her father's remedies to treat the king's illness, and exits.

_____

This scene is a good reminder that Shakespeare wrote for the stage and not for the page. The reader does have an advantage in having a few stage directions (usually supplied by an editor) and character identifications that the viewer of the play lacks, for example: "Enter  young BERTRAM, Count of Rossillion, his mother [the COUNTESS], and HELENA, LORD LAFEW, all in black." The viewer would have to listen attentively to pick up the names of Bertram and Helena, but Lafew is not named in the dialogue. The suspicion that the characters are in mourning, since they are dressed in black, is a clue supplied in both the interpolated stage direction and the actual costuming, and confirmed in the dialogue.

But what sort of characters are these? That's left up to the actor and the director to determine from the dialogue, and sometimes this is where the reader is let down. We will learn over the course of the play that Bertram is callow and petulant, but there's nothing in this scene to suggest that. Here's where the viewer gets an advantage over the reader. Actor and director will suggest this in staging, for example, line 55:

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes. 

Bertram interrupts the Countess's and Lafew's attempts to console the tearful Helena. On the stage, he may do this rudely and impatiently, though there's nothing in the text itself to indicate that. While Helena is weeping, Bertram may have been tapping his foot impatiently. As for his attitude toward Helena, who loves him, that's left entirely up to the actors to convey. For example, lines 70-76:

Count. Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram. [Exit.]

Ber. The best wishes that can be forg'd in your thoughts be servants to you!
[To Helena] Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her.

Laf. Farewell, pretty lady; you must hold the credit of your father. [Exeunt Bertram and Lafew.]

G.K. Hunter, the editor, observes that earlier editors took the entirety of Bertram's lines here to be addressed to Helena, but that he follows the lead of another editor in dividing the two lines, having Bertram speak the first to the departing countess, and the second to Helena. The line addressed to Helena would be delivered with the cool formality of a superior in rank -- notice, too, that Bertram, unlike Lafew, doesn't say farewell to Helena, but turns and departs, whereas Lafew even dresses his farewell with a complimentary "pretty lady." Helena's subsequent speech does indicate to the reader where things stand between her and Bertram, but most of these relationships that would be clear to the viewer are lost on the first-time reader.

Similarly, how are we to read Parolles' speeches? Helena tells us he is "a notorious liar, ... a great way fool, solely a coward," but the degree and nature of these characteristics is largely up to the actor -- and perhaps the costumer, who has the opportunity to make Parolles foppish or macho or ridiculous in some other way. Again, there are many ways to interpret lines 104-107. I imagine them something like this:

Par. (Swaggeringly) Save you, fair queen!

Hel. (Amused) And you, (pauses to come up with an appropriate response) monarch!

Par. (He is flattered, but affects humility, shaking his head and drawing out the demurral) No.

Hel. (Off-handedly, with a smile and a shrug) And no.

But there are many other ways those lines can be read. The point here is that one reason for the comparative inertness and obscurity of All's Well on the page is that, unlike the Shakespeare plays we are more familiar with, its unfamiliarity presents a problem for the reader trying to stage it in his or her head. 

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Scene II. -- Paris. The King's palace.

The king of France enters to report to his attendant lords that Florence and Siena (the "Senoys") are still at war, and that the Austrian monarch has written to tell him that Florence is going to ask him for aid and that he should deny it. He is inclined to agree as far as any official French alliance is concerned, but he won't stand in the way of any Frenchmen who want to join up on either side.

Bertram arrives, accompanied by Lafew and Parolles. The king observes how much Bertram looks like his father, and adds, "Thy father's moral parts / Mayest thou inherit too!" -- in other words, he can't tell whether the young count has achieved that kind of maturity yet. Speaking of Bertram's father, enumerating his many virtues, makes the king aware of his age and illness and the fact that he is standing in the way of ambitious younger men who seek action and advancement. He asks Bertram how long it has been since the death of Helena's father, "the physician at your father's," and Bertram says it has been six months. The king regrets his death because he thought Helena's father might have a cure for him. He takes Bertram's arm and they exit.

Scene III. -- Rossillion. The Count's palace. 

The countess enters with her steward, followed by the clown (i.e., Lavatch). The steward has something he wants to tell her about Helena, but is perhaps hesitant to talk about it in front of Lavatch, whom the countess now tries to get rid of. Lavatch persists, however, saying that he wants her permission to marry a woman named Isbel. The countess asks why he wants to get married -- she is obviously intrigued to hear what he has to say on the subject -- so he tells her that he wants to have children because he has heard that children are blessings. He also wants to sanctify his lusts: "I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are, and indeed I do marry that I may repent." The countess replies that he will repent his marriage rather than his wickedness. He also says he has no friends, and that his wife will attract some. When the countess suggests, "Such friends are thine enemies, knave," he replies that he doesn't mind being cuckolded: "for the knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of" -- i.e., sleeping with his wife.

He that ears [plows] my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop [i.e., reap what someone else has cultivated]; if I be his cuckold, he's my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend.

The countess calls him "foul-mouth'd and calumnious," but he says he's a prophet who speaks the truth, which is, after all, the task of the licensed fool.

The steward, no doubt getting impatient with all of this, asks the countess to send the fool for Helena, but it only provokes Lavatch to a ballad about Helen of Troy, suggesting that out of ten women only one is good, which which the countess protests is a reversal of proportions of good to bad in the original ballad. But finally she gets him to leave to fetch Helena.

The steward then reveals that he overheard Helena talking to herself, and that she revealed her love for Bertram. The countess isn't surprised; she had suspected as much, but lacked confirmation. She thanks him and tells him to keep it a secret. As Helena enters, the countess admits to herself that she understands what Helena is experiencing: "Even so it was with me when I was young." But when she says to Helena, "I am a mother to you," she notices that Helena reacts badly: "Methought you saw a serpent," she tells her. Helena protests that she can't be the countess' daughter. There are two things at work here: As Hunter tells us in the footnote, "mother" could also mean "mother-in-law," which Helena believes can never happen because of the disparity in her birth and Bertram's. But if Helena is the countess' daughter and Bertram the countess' son, that also implies that they are sister and brother -- an impediment to marriage. In any case, she points out the disparity of birth: "The Count Rossillion cannot be my brother, / I am from humble, he from honoured name."

But the countess makes light of this argument, and reveals that she knows the truth: "You love my son." Helena evades confirming the countess' statement, but finally she breaks down and admits it. She assures the countess, however, that she has no intention of pursuing him with an aim to marriage: "I follow him not / By any token of presumptuous suit."

                      Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper
But knows of him no more. 

The countess, however, reveals something else she knows: that Helena had made plans to go to Paris. Helena tells the countess that her father had left her some information about medicines that she thinks might be capable of curing the king's illness. The fact that Bertram had recently left for Paris, Helena says, is what put her in mind of going there to see if she can cure the king. The countess warns that it's unlikely that the king's physicians would be willing to try a remedy offered by "A poor unlearned virgin" when they have failed to cure the king themselves. But Helena's faith in her father's abilities makes her willing to propose it, even on pain of death if she should fail:

But give me leave to try success, I'd venture
The well-lost life of mine on his grace's cure
By such a day, an hour.

Moved by Helena's courage, the countess gives her leave to go to Paris and supplies her with "Means and attendants, and my loving greetings / To those of mine at court."