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Ted's Reviews > All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)
by
Not 3 1/2, 4
I enjoyed this play more than I thought I would, partly due to the excellent production of it I watched. Certainly more to think about here than the previous two comedies I read.
I. All’s Well That Ends Well
The name of this play has become almost a hackneyed phrase in the English language. It’s a phrase that hackneyed me has used countless times, since I became familiar with it so many decades ago. But for all that, it’s not one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, and is seldom performed.
No contemporaneous mentions of the play or quotations from it have ever been found. There are problems with the text; the style is uneven; and there’s no external fact or topical reference with the drama to accurately date its composition. However, the best passages have been taken as evidence of a maturity in the writer, hence it is typically placed in the latter half of Shakespeare’s works, and in my collection it has been placed between Troilus and Cressida (1602) and Othello (1603). This dating makes it the 25th of the 37 plays included.
Most critics have apparently agreed with Samuel Johnson’s verdict that although it has “many delightful scenes�, its characters are “not new, nor produced by any deep knowledge of human nature�, and that several of the most notable are quite unlikeable. My editor (writing in the middle of the last century) also notes that some modern readers are uncomfortable with moral aspects of the play. Both this observation, and the “unlikeable characters� seem silly to me. As always, Shakespeare, like any author, is writing for an audience, and his audience was the theatre audience of his own time. On top of that, I couldn’t care less about whether a fictional character is “likeable� � really, do you?
(Coleridge, by the way, went out of his way to defend Bertram, one of the characters easy to dislike, as perfectly justified in rejecting Helena as a wife - given his aristocratic birth and Helena’s station as nothing more than the daughter of a physician, basically a retainer of Bertram’s father.)
II. Shakespeare’s source
The source of this play cannot be argued about. It is based on a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The tale is found as the ninth story of the third day. One of Boccaccio’s female characters, Neifile, presides as queen on the third day, and thus relates that ninth tale. She has decreed that the stories on her day will be ones in which a person either has painfully acquired something or has lost it and then regained it.
The story she tells can be traced back to the Sanskrit dramatist and poet Kālidāsa in his The Recognition of Śakuntalā (which itself may go back as far as the 5th century).
(view spoiler)
III. From story to play
I thought for this play I’d write something about what Shakespeare did to turn Boccaccio’s story into a play.
III.a Boccaccio’s characters
In The Decameron (see this PDF: ), there are six characters. The first three are Bertrand, the young Count of Roussillion; Juliet, the young woman in love with Bertrand; and the King of France. These are all main characters for Boccaccio.
The other three characters are women of Florence: a widow; a neighbor lady to the widow; and the neighbor’s daughter, who is the object of Bertrand’s desires. (None of these women of Florence even has a name in the story.) It is only the second of these, the daughter’s mother, who gets much of a role in the story, for it is her to whom Juliet addresses her woes and makes her appeal. The daughter, in fact, is barely mentioned.
III.b What Shakespeare did with Boccaccio’s characters
In All’s Well, the first three characters are presented as Bertram, Count of Rousillon; Helena is the young woman (Shakespeare changes her name); and the King of France. These characters play in general the same roles in the drama as they do in the story.
Boccaccio’s three unnamed women of Florence become, for Shakespeare, four women of Florence. The Widow is still unnamed, but becomes the mother of Diana, the object of Bertram’s passions. Both the Widow and Diana are implored by Helena for aid in her scheme. Two other neighbor women to the Widow, Violenta and Mariana, are introduced as fairly minor characters. So here we have the first noticeable change made by Shakespeare: he’s decided that Boccaccio’s Widow & “mother� can be combined into a single character.
III.c How the Story, and Play, are told
This section is something of a spoiler, so ... (Also, its kind of anal, so ...)
(view spoiler)
III.d Shakespeare’s new characters.
Shakespeare added four major characters to his play. In this section I refer to percentages of All’s Well �. These were determined by estimating the column-inches that each scene occupied in my Complete Works, and making the simplifying assumption that each character in a scene is there for the whole scene, regardless of how many words the character speaks. Think of these percentages as an indication of the amount of time a character has on the Elizabethan stage.
The four new, significant characters are: the old Countess (Bertram’s mother), Lafeu, Lavache (the Clown), and Parolles. In adding the last of these, he introduced a major subplot to the play.
Shakespeare has Bertram and Helena each on stage about 60% of the play, the King of France 33%, and the Widow and her daughter Dianna about 20% each.
Parolles is on stage 2/3 of the play! He becomes, in a sense, the main character! In fact, 40% of the play has Parolles on stage with both Bertram and Helena. Of Shakespeare’s other inventions, Lafeu is present for half of the play, the Countess over 40%, and the Clown about the same as the two women of Florence.
In sum, Boccaccio’s Bertrand and Juliet can still make claim to being the stars of Shakespeare’s play. The King of France actually plays a more significant role on stage than he does in the story (because of his presence in the last scene). But every other character in All’s Well who is on-stage more than a few minutes is either an invention of the Bard’s, or a character from the story modified by Shakespeare.
III.e Shakespeare’s main scenes.
Of the 23 scenes in All’s Well, six are each 8% or more of the entire play, and collectively make up almost 60%. The other 17 scenes range between 5% and 1% of the play.
Shakespeare devotes acts I and II to the introductory material and the Paris scenes. These two acts comprise about 45% of the play, and follow Boccaccio’s story fairly closely. They do, however, include the new characters, even as they set up Helena’s deceit. Four of Shakespeare’s big scenes occur in these acts: I.i (Bertram, Helena, Parolles, Lafeu and the Countess), I.iii (Helena, the Countess and the Clown), and both II.i and II.iii (the same as I.i, but substitute the King for the Countess).
The second longest scene in the play is IV.iii, which has not a thing related to Boccaccio’s story - the scene in which Parolles is shown to Bertram to be the liar & traitor (among other things) that he is.
The longest scene (12% of the play) is the last one, V.iii. Every major character is on the stage except for the Clown.
IV. Movie/TV
For this play I watched episode 3, season 3 of the BBC Television Shakespeare. This production starred Ian Charleson (Bertram), Angela Down (Helena), Donald Sinden (the King), Celia Johnson (the Countess) and Pippa Guard (Diana). I also particularly enjoyed Michael Hordern (Lafeu), Paul Brooke (Lavache, the Clown) and Peter Jeffrey (Parolles). This enactment was superior to either of the movies I watched for my two previous plays. The players seemed comfortable with their Shakesperean roles, spoke like they were Elizabethans, and were clear and understandable. It was as if a play on the boards had been filmed, rather than a popular production for a movie audience. Perhaps the fact that none of the actors was a “star� helped.
The director, Elijah Moshinsky, seemed to approach the play as more of a serious drama than something done for laughs, or even as a play that would at least have a happy ending. To me, this raised the play up above the earlier comedies I’ve read, and also gave it a focus that I hadn’t sensed during my read. I loved it.
This production of the play is available in full on YouTube.
By the way, starting at around 34 minutes is the scene in which Helena convinces the King to let her attempt his healing. I was quite surprised that the scene is played by both actress and actor as almost a two way seduction.
V. The Play and I � comedy?
This is the first of Shakespeare’s plays (in my old-age project) for which watching the play (above) really contributed to my appreciation and interpretation.
As I read the play, I thought about how it’s come to be classified as a “comedy�. A little research informed me that the “comedy� genre of Shakespeare’s plays is sort of a catch-all. Not a Tragedy; not a History; so a Comedy (the “Problem� plays being off in left field by themselves). The point being that there aren’t a whole lot of laughs in the play, not even of the suggestive, double-entendre type of banter that was plentiful in As You Like It. There is a bit of banter, usually involving Parolles or the Clown, but it’s not the same type � and when Parolles is involved, the laughs are always coming by another character insulting him, that is, laughter at his expense.
This was brought out in the TV production very well. But I was struck, watching that, by a rather sombre mood. This was highlighted by IV.iii (above), in which Parolles is shown, blindfolded, with his head pushed down on a table, and the soldier holding him saying, “There is no remedy, sir, but you must die � Come, Headsman, off with his head.� To which Parolles moans, “Oh, Lord, sir, let me live, or let me see my death.� Even though the “Oh, Lord, sir� echoes the Clown’s foolishness with the Countess in II.ii, it’s hard not to feel a pang of sorrow for Parolles, who must be experiencing the terror of thinking that his life is about to end.
And Parolles, after all, is not the only character with faults in the play. Bertram goes without saying; the King, having displayed a tyranny over Bertram in Act II, repeats the same dark fault in the last scene, as he is about to order another man to become Diana’s husband. Lafeu, a perceptive man, and one who earns our admiration for his kindness toward Parolles near the end, has nevertheless thrust his daughter forward as a suitable match for Bertram, no doubt calculating that to be connected with the Roussillion estate can be an advantage for him. Indeed, when we examine all the characters, we see in each of them, even Helena, examples of human beings like all others, who evince a combination of good and bad traits as they pass across life’s stage.
The King says, in the Epilogue
Comedy? More like a tragi-comedy.
by
Not 3 1/2, 4
I enjoyed this play more than I thought I would, partly due to the excellent production of it I watched. Certainly more to think about here than the previous two comedies I read.
I. All’s Well That Ends Well
The name of this play has become almost a hackneyed phrase in the English language. It’s a phrase that hackneyed me has used countless times, since I became familiar with it so many decades ago. But for all that, it’s not one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, and is seldom performed.
No contemporaneous mentions of the play or quotations from it have ever been found. There are problems with the text; the style is uneven; and there’s no external fact or topical reference with the drama to accurately date its composition. However, the best passages have been taken as evidence of a maturity in the writer, hence it is typically placed in the latter half of Shakespeare’s works, and in my collection it has been placed between Troilus and Cressida (1602) and Othello (1603). This dating makes it the 25th of the 37 plays included.
Most critics have apparently agreed with Samuel Johnson’s verdict that although it has “many delightful scenes�, its characters are “not new, nor produced by any deep knowledge of human nature�, and that several of the most notable are quite unlikeable. My editor (writing in the middle of the last century) also notes that some modern readers are uncomfortable with moral aspects of the play. Both this observation, and the “unlikeable characters� seem silly to me. As always, Shakespeare, like any author, is writing for an audience, and his audience was the theatre audience of his own time. On top of that, I couldn’t care less about whether a fictional character is “likeable� � really, do you?
(Coleridge, by the way, went out of his way to defend Bertram, one of the characters easy to dislike, as perfectly justified in rejecting Helena as a wife - given his aristocratic birth and Helena’s station as nothing more than the daughter of a physician, basically a retainer of Bertram’s father.)
II. Shakespeare’s source
The source of this play cannot be argued about. It is based on a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The tale is found as the ninth story of the third day. One of Boccaccio’s female characters, Neifile, presides as queen on the third day, and thus relates that ninth tale. She has decreed that the stories on her day will be ones in which a person either has painfully acquired something or has lost it and then regained it.
The story she tells can be traced back to the Sanskrit dramatist and poet Kālidāsa in his The Recognition of Śakuntalā (which itself may go back as far as the 5th century).
(view spoiler)
III. From story to play
I thought for this play I’d write something about what Shakespeare did to turn Boccaccio’s story into a play.
III.a Boccaccio’s characters
In The Decameron (see this PDF: ), there are six characters. The first three are Bertrand, the young Count of Roussillion; Juliet, the young woman in love with Bertrand; and the King of France. These are all main characters for Boccaccio.
The other three characters are women of Florence: a widow; a neighbor lady to the widow; and the neighbor’s daughter, who is the object of Bertrand’s desires. (None of these women of Florence even has a name in the story.) It is only the second of these, the daughter’s mother, who gets much of a role in the story, for it is her to whom Juliet addresses her woes and makes her appeal. The daughter, in fact, is barely mentioned.
III.b What Shakespeare did with Boccaccio’s characters
In All’s Well, the first three characters are presented as Bertram, Count of Rousillon; Helena is the young woman (Shakespeare changes her name); and the King of France. These characters play in general the same roles in the drama as they do in the story.
Boccaccio’s three unnamed women of Florence become, for Shakespeare, four women of Florence. The Widow is still unnamed, but becomes the mother of Diana, the object of Bertram’s passions. Both the Widow and Diana are implored by Helena for aid in her scheme. Two other neighbor women to the Widow, Violenta and Mariana, are introduced as fairly minor characters. So here we have the first noticeable change made by Shakespeare: he’s decided that Boccaccio’s Widow & “mother� can be combined into a single character.
III.c How the Story, and Play, are told
This section is something of a spoiler, so ... (Also, its kind of anal, so ...)
(view spoiler)
III.d Shakespeare’s new characters.
Shakespeare added four major characters to his play. In this section I refer to percentages of All’s Well �. These were determined by estimating the column-inches that each scene occupied in my Complete Works, and making the simplifying assumption that each character in a scene is there for the whole scene, regardless of how many words the character speaks. Think of these percentages as an indication of the amount of time a character has on the Elizabethan stage.
The four new, significant characters are: the old Countess (Bertram’s mother), Lafeu, Lavache (the Clown), and Parolles. In adding the last of these, he introduced a major subplot to the play.
Shakespeare has Bertram and Helena each on stage about 60% of the play, the King of France 33%, and the Widow and her daughter Dianna about 20% each.
Parolles is on stage 2/3 of the play! He becomes, in a sense, the main character! In fact, 40% of the play has Parolles on stage with both Bertram and Helena. Of Shakespeare’s other inventions, Lafeu is present for half of the play, the Countess over 40%, and the Clown about the same as the two women of Florence.
In sum, Boccaccio’s Bertrand and Juliet can still make claim to being the stars of Shakespeare’s play. The King of France actually plays a more significant role on stage than he does in the story (because of his presence in the last scene). But every other character in All’s Well who is on-stage more than a few minutes is either an invention of the Bard’s, or a character from the story modified by Shakespeare.
III.e Shakespeare’s main scenes.
Of the 23 scenes in All’s Well, six are each 8% or more of the entire play, and collectively make up almost 60%. The other 17 scenes range between 5% and 1% of the play.
Shakespeare devotes acts I and II to the introductory material and the Paris scenes. These two acts comprise about 45% of the play, and follow Boccaccio’s story fairly closely. They do, however, include the new characters, even as they set up Helena’s deceit. Four of Shakespeare’s big scenes occur in these acts: I.i (Bertram, Helena, Parolles, Lafeu and the Countess), I.iii (Helena, the Countess and the Clown), and both II.i and II.iii (the same as I.i, but substitute the King for the Countess).
The second longest scene in the play is IV.iii, which has not a thing related to Boccaccio’s story - the scene in which Parolles is shown to Bertram to be the liar & traitor (among other things) that he is.
The longest scene (12% of the play) is the last one, V.iii. Every major character is on the stage except for the Clown.
IV. Movie/TV
For this play I watched episode 3, season 3 of the BBC Television Shakespeare. This production starred Ian Charleson (Bertram), Angela Down (Helena), Donald Sinden (the King), Celia Johnson (the Countess) and Pippa Guard (Diana). I also particularly enjoyed Michael Hordern (Lafeu), Paul Brooke (Lavache, the Clown) and Peter Jeffrey (Parolles). This enactment was superior to either of the movies I watched for my two previous plays. The players seemed comfortable with their Shakesperean roles, spoke like they were Elizabethans, and were clear and understandable. It was as if a play on the boards had been filmed, rather than a popular production for a movie audience. Perhaps the fact that none of the actors was a “star� helped.
The director, Elijah Moshinsky, seemed to approach the play as more of a serious drama than something done for laughs, or even as a play that would at least have a happy ending. To me, this raised the play up above the earlier comedies I’ve read, and also gave it a focus that I hadn’t sensed during my read. I loved it.
This production of the play is available in full on YouTube.
By the way, starting at around 34 minutes is the scene in which Helena convinces the King to let her attempt his healing. I was quite surprised that the scene is played by both actress and actor as almost a two way seduction.
V. The Play and I � comedy?
This is the first of Shakespeare’s plays (in my old-age project) for which watching the play (above) really contributed to my appreciation and interpretation.
As I read the play, I thought about how it’s come to be classified as a “comedy�. A little research informed me that the “comedy� genre of Shakespeare’s plays is sort of a catch-all. Not a Tragedy; not a History; so a Comedy (the “Problem� plays being off in left field by themselves). The point being that there aren’t a whole lot of laughs in the play, not even of the suggestive, double-entendre type of banter that was plentiful in As You Like It. There is a bit of banter, usually involving Parolles or the Clown, but it’s not the same type � and when Parolles is involved, the laughs are always coming by another character insulting him, that is, laughter at his expense.
This was brought out in the TV production very well. But I was struck, watching that, by a rather sombre mood. This was highlighted by IV.iii (above), in which Parolles is shown, blindfolded, with his head pushed down on a table, and the soldier holding him saying, “There is no remedy, sir, but you must die � Come, Headsman, off with his head.� To which Parolles moans, “Oh, Lord, sir, let me live, or let me see my death.� Even though the “Oh, Lord, sir� echoes the Clown’s foolishness with the Countess in II.ii, it’s hard not to feel a pang of sorrow for Parolles, who must be experiencing the terror of thinking that his life is about to end.
And Parolles, after all, is not the only character with faults in the play. Bertram goes without saying; the King, having displayed a tyranny over Bertram in Act II, repeats the same dark fault in the last scene, as he is about to order another man to become Diana’s husband. Lafeu, a perceptive man, and one who earns our admiration for his kindness toward Parolles near the end, has nevertheless thrust his daughter forward as a suitable match for Bertram, no doubt calculating that to be connected with the Roussillion estate can be an advantage for him. Indeed, when we examine all the characters, we see in each of them, even Helena, examples of human beings like all others, who evince a combination of good and bad traits as they pass across life’s stage.
The King says, in the Epilogue
The King’s a beggar, now the play is done.This rather enigmatic speech does nothing to dispel a feeling of evening falling, life winding down as ever.
All is well ended, if this suit be won,
That you express content; which we will pay,
With strife to please you, day exceeding day.
Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts.
Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.
Comedy? More like a tragi-comedy.
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It's one of two Sh pays featuring a "bed-trick" like that in Bruno's Candelaio twenty years earlier: the substitution of a fiancee (or wife) for the would-be lover. What's amusing here are the multiple tasks to achieve marriage with the fleeing Rousillion--esp getting the ring off his finger (see gift rings by messenger in Merchant and Twelfth Night, the ringiest of Sh's play), but also becoming pregnant with the Count's child. In Bruno's play, the wife substitutes for the would-be girlfriend, dresses and speaks like her, but in the dark, with her adulterous-hoping husband, she calls for a crowd to burst in on them in the act, with torches and other light.Also revealing is the daughter of a physician's mastery of medicine, by which she saves the King who offers her anything--the Count, she chooses. I argued at a feminist convention that Shakespeare's characters embody the Renaissance role reversal: Men of words, women of action.
Helena, surely a woman of action.
Amusing to see a physician's daughter considered "low born."
Steve wrote: ""On top of that, I couldn’t care less about whether a fictional character is “likeable� � really, do you?"Nope. :)
Thorough, sir, most thorough! This will require some further digesting. :)"
Thanks for your comment, Steve. Digest away, I hope it ends well for you. 8}
Alan wrote: "It's one of two Sh pays featuring a "bed-trick" like that in Bruno's Candelaio twenty years earlier: the substitution of a fiancee (or wife) for the would-be lover. What's amusing here are the m..."Thanks for your scholarly and informative comment, Alan. I thought of saying something along the lines of your position at the convention. I felt that the play was a very friendly one to women - they supported each other, helped each other, and all seemed in league to upend the aims of the men, especially the lascivious aims. Eventually I decided that I'd written too much already and needed to move on.
By the way, was Bruno's play the one I mentioned in the spoiler in section II.?
Marita wrote: "A comprehensive and really splendid review, Ted."Thanks for your kind comment, Marita!
I was just thinking about this play recently, Ted!Thanks for this very interesting analysis and background information - interesting for me to see Giordano Bruno mentioned - he gets mentioned a lot in Finnegans Wake.
Sorry for mentioning Joyce again ;-(
Fionnuala wrote: "I was just thinking about this play recently, Ted!Thanks for this very interesting analysis and background information - interesting for me to see Giordano Bruno mentioned - he gets mentioned a lo..."
Mentions of FW are always welcome. How else will I ever get acquainted with it? I need to look something up in order to complete this reply, but I'm going for a walk first. Back later.
Ted wrote: "Alan wrote: "It's one of two Sh pays featuring a "bed-trick" like that in Bruno's Candelaio twenty years earlier: the substitution of a fiancee (or wife) for the would-be lover. What's amusing h..."Yes, thanks. Hadn't opened spoiler.
Wonderful essay. I got to learn so much from it. Great job, Ted.
Alan wrote: "Ted wrote: "Alan wrote: "It's one of two Sh pays featuring a "bed-trick" like that in Bruno's Candelaio twenty years earlier: the substitution of a fiancee (or wife) for the would-be lover. What'..."Sorry Alan, I hadn't noticed that you'd mentioned Candelaio in your comment.
Fionnuala wrote: "I was just thinking about this play recently, Ted!
Thanks for this very interesting analysis and background information - interesting for me to see Giordano Bruno mentioned - he gets mentioned a lo..."
I recalled while walking where I'd seen FW mentioned - in a piece Richard Stanyhurst, Dubliner from Pebble Chance. Kociejowski insists that Stanyhurst's tranalation of the first four books of Virgil's Aeneid, published in 1582, is the worst ever. He writes
The poem begins:
I that in old season wyth reeds oten harmonye whistled
My rural sonnet: from forrest flitted (I) forced
Thee sulcking swincker thee soyle, thoghe craggie, to sunder.
A labor and a trauaile too plowswayns hertelye welcoom.
Now manhood and garbroyls I chaunt, and martial horror.
and ends:
Streight, with al, her fayre locks with right hand speedelye snipped:
Foorth with her heat fading, her liefe too windpuf auoyded.
The stuff in between is quite beyond the reach of even our deepest analyses.
There's much
The poetic metal he produces is like no other I have ever seen, although there are intimations of Finnegans Wake. There is in his madness, even when it amounts to a kind of verbal incontinence, an unruffled magnificence. Where there are no words to fit the metre he either invents them or else traumatises the nearest sound available ... for sake of a syllable he adds prefixes - "beblubbered" for example, and produces mimetic effects like "Whear curs barck bawling, with yolp yalpe snarrye rebounding".
(view spoiler)
Jibran wrote: "Wonderful essay. I got to learn so much from it. Great job, Ted."Thanks very much, I appreciate the comment Jibran.
Ted wrote: "There's much wirth woth WORTH quoting, (now Stanyworth is haunting me), but here's the mention of FW. After telling how Stanyworth practised alchemy in later years at Antwerp, K says, ..."What a find, Ted. I think Joyce must have yolped Stanyworth for certain!
Fionnuala wrote: "Ted wrote: "There's much wirth woth WORTH quoting, (now Stanyworth is haunting me), but here's the mention of FW. After telling how Stanyworth practised alchemy in later years at Antwerp, K says, ...."Finnegan's Wake (view spoiler)
Alejandro wrote: "Great review, Ted!"Thanks for taking a look, Alejandro. ;)
Nope. :)
Thorough, sir, most thorough! This will require some further digesting. :)