All’s Well That Ends Well
Story Summary
Helena, the impoverished daughter of a now-deceased physician, loves Bertram, a Count. He goes to court where the King of France is seriously ill. Helena follows him there and cures the king with her father’s medicines, winning a husband of her choosing. She chooses Bertram but he disdains her base origins. To honour the king, he agrees to marry her but runs away to fight in the war with the Florentines, stating that until she has the ring from his finger and his child in her womb, she will not be his wife. She contrives to do this and feigns death. At the news of her death, Bertram has a change of heart, and all’s well that ends well as she is restored to him.
Homeschool Hints
‘All’s Well..’ is regarded as one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’. These are plays that do not conform to the typical pattern of one of his comedies, histories or tragedies. Considered a comedy, which usually ends with the happy couple getting married or betrothed, ‘All’s Well..’ features a forced marriage near the beginning. The challenge for any director producing this play is convincing the audience that Bertram’s change of heart at the end is real.
Fairy Tale
There is a fairy tale element to Bertram’s proclamation, a seemingly impossible task that the heroine has to perform, and the audience sympathises with wronged Helena, whose only faults lie in loving a proud, shallow young man. His character is not the stuff that heroes are made of, and this makes his change of heart at the end of the play difficult to swallow.
Themes
Virginity and sex are themes running throughout the play as Helena uses his seduction of Diana, a Florentine maiden, to enable her to fulfil his conditions. Shakespeare uses similes of war and love throughout the play to illustrate these. See the YouTube video below for more details of characters and themes. I would recommend watching this with older teens.
“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.” (First Lord, Act 4 Scene 3)
This speech gets to the heart of the play and shows Shakespeare’s genius in understanding real people. We are all a mixture of virtues and faults. Like Bertram and Helena, we all make good and bad choices. This is what it means to be human.
Notable Quotes
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
(Countess, Act 1 Scene 1
All’s well that ends well, still the fine’s the crown;
Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.
(Helena, Act 4 Scene 4)
I have seen a medicine
That’s able to breathe life into a stone,
(Lafeu, Act 2 Scene 1)
Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon.
(Lafeu, Act 5, Scene 3)