All's Well That Ends Well | Social Class
In this excerpt, John M. Love examines how social rank "debases" Helena and Bertram and determines their fate as well as that of Parolles. He argues that the issue of social rank is pervasive throughout all of the action of the play.
...The alien, ineradicable element of All's Well that Ends Well and the source of its darkness is the barrier of class. Class debases the characters of Bertram and Helena throughout the play, and in the final scene it determines their fates and that of Parolles, despite the measure of virtue and vice each character possesses. At that point Helena, "a maid too virtuous / For the contempt of empire" (II.ii.30-31), must plead with a pampered husband, Bertram's fellow-prodigal Parolles appears beaten into due submission, and Bertram is, in Johnson's words, "dismissed to happiness." The...
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