SOURCE: Huston, J. Dennis. “‘Some Stain of Soldier’: The Functions of Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well.” Shakespeare Quarterly 21, no. 4 (autumn 1970): 431-38.

[In the following essay, Huston studies the way Parolles, with his unchanneled youthful energy, draws attention to Shakespeare's development of the idea that the energy of society's youth, in order to be constructive and productive, must be directed into the orderly structure of social institutions.]

There is in the personality of Parolles, the fashion-minded courtier and pseudo-soldier of All's Well That Ends Well, a curious mixture of the corrupt and the commendable. His conversation is vain, his carriage foolish, and his conduct disgraceful; repeatedly he maligns the heroine, slandering her before her husband, and even more frequently he misguides the hero as he “instructs” him in the ways of courtly life. Yet in spite of all these failings, Parolles still has something to recommend him: he possesses an immense amount of energy, which periodically infuses his world with dramatic life and which, even more significantly, focuses attention on the thematic development of All's Well as a whole¹—where Shakespeare argues that the energy of youth can be constructively and productively incorporated into society only by being channeled into the ordered forms of traditional social institutions.

Parolles' vital energy is first apparent, and perhaps most obviously noticeable, in the opening scene of the play. At the palace of Rousillon, where the rooms are hung with black curtains of mourning and where the atmosphere is dominated by a sense of death and decay, he appears suddenly, “some stain of soldier” (I.i.122)², a bright blot of color against a sombre background. And as he stands in the dark hall of the palace, Parolles radiates a dramatic light that contrasts markedly with the world presented before his entrance. The people who have just exited after dominating the opening dialogue are old; he is young.³ They have talked quietly and formally; he speaks, probably in a high-pitched voice, very informally. They have been attired in simple, black dress, and he wears the gaily colored and elaborate fashions of the court world. And, most important of all, the people of Rousillon have been obsessed with death, while Parolles talks energetically of life and “rational increase” (I.i.139). Clearly, this courtier-soldier is the representative of values that are alien to the older generation at Rousillon: he looks different, and he speaks and dresses differently from them. He acts differently, too, for he decries the responsibilities of both wardship and marriage, and obeys no laws except those of his own self-interest. But in pursuing his self-advancement, Parolles merely advertises his foolishness, because he cannot control his wagging tongue. His pretenses of courage and courtliness are recognized as fraudulent by nearly everyone he sees, nearly everyone, that is, but Bertram, who is deluded by the superficialities of the braggart's speech and dress. The young Count, though, has a habit of making this kind of mistake. Foolishly, he puts his trust in superfluities—“words” and not deeds, clothes and not the “steely bones” (I.i.114) of virtue that should underlie a man's appearance.

Bertram's injudiciousness is recognizable from the time of his first appearance, when he prepares to leave Rousillon for Paris. Behind him in his father's palace hang the dark colors of mourning; beside him stand the mourners, old people who delay his departure with their talk of death. In language that is involuted and devoid of energy, they speak of one decease after another—the old Count's, his physician's, and that which threatens the King. Bertram has no interest in their concerns or in the society of Rousillon that now conspicuously lacks an energetic leader. Though he is the only person who seems qualified to revive a social order grown infirm, he chooses instead to abandon the small world of Rousillon for the excitement of one larger and more fashionable.

But the realm into which Bertram moves differs only in superficial splendor from the palace at Rousillon. In essence, the two worlds are the same, because within the walls of the King's, as well as the Count's palace, death keeps his court. In Paris an old and diseased ruler laments the passing of his former friends, wonders about his own usefulness, and worries about the immaturity of the younger generation. Here, as at Rousillon, the young men who should be readying themselves to assume the burdens of social responsibilities are instead departing, with hopes that they will find a more exciting and interesting life elsewhere. Clearly, the disease which afflicts the King of France has a symbolic significance: it is the reflection, in physical terms, of a figurative disease which is ravaging his whole realm, robbing it of order and energy.

The forces of death which threaten the order of society at the beginning of All's Well are, however, successfully countered during the course of the play. Through the operation of natural process, artfully combined with particular human endeavor, the order of society is eventually renewed. The King is cured of his disease and of the afflictions common to old age in general, for by the end of the drama he no longer remains confined to his bed, or even to his palace. Instead he travels about his realm, as if he were again a young man. Other characters, too, seem reborn out of death into a new identity. They are not, of course, all saved in the same way, nor do all their recoveries have the same kind of thematic importance, but they all contribute in varying degrees to the regenerative tone of the ending. Helena, who is supposed to have died in Saint Jaques' monastery, returns to Rousillon to become a wife and mother; and Parolles, who blindfolded has heard the order for his own execution, discovers when his blindfold is removed—symbolically as well as actually—that he is not really going to be killed. Bertram, too, like the King, Helena, and Parolles, is recalled from death in the course of the play. Threatened with a sentence of execution for the murder of his wife, he is finally acquitted by the apparently miraculous arrival of a living and forgiving corpus delicti. And in Bertram's encounter with death, images of darkness again have thematic significance.

For example, the all-important “bed-trick”, which indirectly precipitates the young Count's inquisition before the King, takes place in a completely dark room, where Bertram mistakes Helena for Diana. The darkness that is the setting for this rendezvous is, obviously, demanded by the dictates of dramatic plausibility, but it has thematic functions as well. It suggests that the Count, like his boastful companion who is blindfolded at the time of the “bed-trick”, moves in a figurative as well as a physical darkness. So inadequate are Bertram's powers of moral perception that he cannot see people as they really are. His condition is, symbolically, that of a lustful young man in a dark room, where he cannot tell a true wife from a “common gamester to the camp” (V.iii.188).

The darkness, however, is not only a reflection of Bertram's moral blindness; it is also a symbolic presentation of expanding social dissolution. Earlier the palaces at Rousillon and at Paris have been threatened by the decay attending old age. Now the rejuvenating powers of the younger generation are menaced by the irresponsibility attending youth. Rashly pursuing his desires, Bertram ignores his responsibilities as a husband, because his intentions are adulterous. More important, he betrays his obligation as a member of society, because his action has as its goal the immediate satisfaction of sexual appetite and not the eventual regeneration of the social order. Although man's duty to society—as the dramatic accounts and implications of the King's sickness have made clear—is to maintain its order by producing an heir to his position, Bertram has no such thoughts when he meets “Diana”. Following the self-interested teachings of Parolles, he surrenders to the demands of lust and unknowingly betrays himself, by destroying his identity as a human being. He treats the woman who is with him as if she were merely an object, a commodity that he has sought on the open market and bought for one very particular purpose. But by thus dehumanizing “Diana”, Bertram also sacrifices his own identity as a man. He becomes little more than an animal, a creature of appetite.

The forces of order, however, still retain the capacity to work miracles, and because of the miraculous power of human love, Count Rousillon is rescued from self-betrayal. The honor of his name—represented by the family ring which he thoughtlessly exchanges for an hour of pleasure—is not as he soon thinks irrevocably lost, for he unintentionally gives it to his own wife. Thinking to exchange one kind of ring for another, Bertram instead provides for the continuing family possession of both rings. At the same time, the honor of the family name is insured actually as well as symbolically by the young Count's action; as a result of the “bed-trick”, Helena becomes pregnant.

The child that she carries in her body when she returns to confront Bertram at Rousillon is thematically important for a number of reasons. First, as an outward and visible sign of the union that Helena has achieved with her husband—fulfilling the conditions of his letter—the child gives promise of the inward and spiritual union that can be established between Bertram and his wife. Second, Helena's pregnancy announces that the younger generation has come of age. No longer is their energy to be irresponsibly dissipated in play. Instead they are prepared to assume a productive role in society, replacing their parents as its leaders. Third, the child draws attention to the motifs of rebirth which are developed in the play. Only shortly before this scene, Parolles has appeared as a new man, reborn after his encounter with death. He is, in fact, so newly returned from his recreation that he carries the smell and markings of earth about him still. Then Helena, presumed dead, arrives—not as a humble physician's daughter who is a countess in name only, but as Bertram's true wife, pledged in act as well as word. By her arrival, Helena thus provides for the regeneration of her husband. He, like Parolles earlier, has proven himself a coward and a liar, under the pressure of the King's inquisition, and though his cowardice has been moral and not physical as the braggart's was, it has had the same result. He is threatened by a sentence of death. Then, suddenly and miraculously, he is recalled to life. The figurative blindfold is removed from his eyes; the darkness of error dissolves, and he sees that he has been a fool. But though he has been deluded, his mistakes have done no harm. Mercifully granted a second chance, he resolves to become a new man, and even his speech is affected by the spiritual rebirth: at least momentarily, he can manage little more than baby-talk:

If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,
I'll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.

(V.iii.316-317)

Where once Rousillon was oppressed by darkness and sterility, it is now infused with light and fertility. The dark colors of mourning no longer hang about the palace, and no one is dressed in black. Talk that formerly concerned itself with death now deals with the subject of life, with marriage and the child that Helena carries in her body. And the young Count, who was departing from Rousillon when the play began, has now returned, somewhat wiser than the eager, but self-deluding boy who left. A world that earlier appeared to be disintegrating now rests secure, on a newly ordered foundation: the younger generation shows evidence of its productivity, and no one questions their capacity to assume social responsibilities. All at last has ended well. The general movement of the play is clear.

This outline of All's Well is, however, an oversimplification, and it has distinct limitations. Because of the complexity of the dramatic world in this play, at least one important problem is left unresolved by such a general thematic study. That problem is how to define the nature and meaning of the relationship between Helena and Parolles. Clearly, these two characters engage in a struggle for the control of Bertram's personality during the course of the play, and at first Parolles enjoys the ascendancy in this conflict: he misguides the young Count, whose immaturity is strikingly emphasized by the company he keeps. Only one whose capacity for perception was decidedly limited by inexperience could be fooled by such an obvious fraud. Also, as an obvious result of his decision to embrace Parolles as a friend, Bertram begins to assume some of the braggart's most dissolute characteristics. The young Count's errors of immaturity are thus subsequently compounded by a good deal of moral cowardice. Symbolically, then, as well as actually, Bertram travels with Parolles, who draws attention to the Count's weaknesses by manifesting them in an exaggerated degree. But since Bertram is too thick-headed to recognize his own failings, even when they are exposed in the contemptible conduct of his companion, he can be rescued only by human endeavor conjoined with enduring love. The emissary of that love is Helena, who possesses an apparently unlimited capacity for forgiveness and an unearthly ability to work miracles. So, though Bertram is for a time influenced by Parolles, he is eventually rescued from self-destruction by his wife's love. In the struggle to control the young Count's personality, the final victory is Helena's, not Parolles'.

This clear opposition between the braggart and the heroine is not, however, consistently maintained throughout All's Well, for sometimes the essential differences between these two characters are blurred, and momentarily their similarities become important. At these times, it is apparent that Parolles is Helena's ally as well as her enemy, for he possesses qualities that she needs to develop before she can win Bertram. A suggestion of the complexity apparent in the dramatic relationship between Parolles and Helena is to be found near the end of the first scene.

During the time when the young Count prepares to leave for Paris, Helena silently contends with her grief. She speaks only once, and then in answer to a direct inquiry from the Countess. When she at last is left alone, however, Helena gives full voice to her sorrow:

                                                                                          … my imagination
Carries no favour in't but Bertram's.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. 'Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. …

(I.i.93-103)

Two characteristics of this soliloquy are particularly notable. First, it emphasizes Helena's youthfulness and inexperience, for it is marked by the radical thought characteristic of a young mind. There is no moderation at all in this speech: life without Bertram is “death”; her imagination has room in it only for his image; she might as well hope to wed a star as this young Count. Helena's world, as she describes it here, is composed only of extremes, and she is soon to learn that her youthful analysis of the situation has greatly oversimplified it. Second, the speech suggests Helena's temporary emotional commitment to the powers which are encircling the old Count's palace. She, like Lafeu and the Countess, seems too much in love with easeful death; and though this fascination results from the rashness of youth rather than from the impotence of age, it testifies to the expanding dissemination of darkness, which threatens even the younger generation at Rousillon.

Helena is too young to think of death for long, however, and she is soon encouraged to act by the conversation and bearing of Parolles. When the braggart enters, dressed in gay colors and walking with self-assurance, Helena has just finished her soliloquy of despair: Bertram has left, and her situation is hopeless—“there is no living, none …”. Yet by the time that Parolles has left, Helena has changed her mind completely. Instead of staying at Rousillon and feeling sorry for herself, she resolves to follow the Count to Paris and to win him by healing the sick King. Since the conversation with Parolles clearly precipitates this decision, the braggart's action and manner must in some way affect the heroine's view of her situation; some of the color of his personality must rub off on her.

The most important quality that Helena derives from Parolles is an energetic commitment to life. Until his appearance she has been completely influenced by the oppressive atmosphere of the palace. Her talk has been only of death and of the hopelessness of her situation. But as soon as Parolles begins to speak of “rational increase” and sexual intercourse, Helena realizes that she is too young to surrender to death. Instead of repressing her vital energy, she gives it conscious expression by engaging the braggart in an interplay of wit at his level and by trading double-entendres with him: “I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin” (I.i.145-146). In this exchange with Parolles, too, the eventual result of Helena's decision to follow Bertram is suggested, for the debate involves a kind of verbal “bed-trick”. By matching wits and trading puns with the braggart—who, as the Count's friend, can go to the court where Helena wishes to travel—she can get imaginatively closer to the world that her love inhabits: Helena initially admits (lines 110-111) that she converses with Parolles only because he is one of Bertram's companions. Since he wants to talk lewdly about virginity in the pun-filled language fashionable at court, she plays his game and, as a result, enters vicariously into the world where Bertram is going. Using references to her virginity and to intercourse, Helena moves momentarily into the young Count's sphere; significantly, she will later actually use her virginity and intercourse as the means of becoming a permanent member of his world.

But although the energetic affirmation of life that Helena suddenly makes in the first scene is precipitated by Parolles, it differs significantly from his vigorously self-interested philosophy. Her newly acquired vitality is used in an essentially productive manner. In the process of winning Bertram for her husband, she heals the sick King, whose land has become sterile; she rechannels into socially productive action the Count's youthful sexual energy that would have dissipated itself in lust; and she brings life, in the form of a child, back into a world threatened with dissolution by the encircling powers of death. Parolles' energy, on the other hand, is basically destructive in nature, for his apparent vitality ultimately proves to be misdirected. Like the “lust in action” of Sonnet 129, it is “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”. So often does Parolles' pose force him to disparage other human beings that, eventually, he comes to disparage himself as well, probably because of his common bond, as man, with those whom he criticizes. And the result of this self-disparagement is finally “waste” or inaction—because energy that would ordinarily be employed to meet the challenges of the outside world is turned inward and expended in useless self-incrimination. At one time, particularly, Parolles sharply criticizes himself for being a fool. Wondering why he has been imprudent enough to boast that he could capture the enemy's drum, he soliloquizes:

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? I must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in exploit: yet slight ones will not carry it; they will say, ‘Came you off with so little?’ and great ones I dare not give. Wherefore, what's the instance? Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman's mouth and buy myself another of Bajazet's mule, if you prattle me into these perils.

(IV.i.37-47)

While the braggart continues to wonder about his foolhardy behavior, he is suddenly seized, blindfolded, and bound, so that he is made actually, as well as figuratively, incapable of acting upon his environment. When he is subsequently freed of his fetters, it is only after he has publicly, though unknowingly, declared his impotence and cowardice to his associates. Because his conduct before the “Muskos” captors has clearly revealed his true nature, the braggart can at last accept himself as he really is. Resolving to be “Simply the thing I am”, he no longer is to be compelled by hidden, self-critical impulses to disguise his limitations beneath the superficial color of a fashionable rhetoric and dress.

Because Parolles' energy—until the time of his unmasking—is misdirected, the color that he brings into the darkened world of Rousillon during the first scene of All's Well is deceiving. It is not a natural brightness, but only the luster of a superficial “stain”. So long as he depends for his impressiveness upon a false art that covers rotten materials with a surface coating of bright color, Parolles is, beneath the fashionable clothes and rhetoric, a “general offence” (II.iii.267). Consequently, the apparent resemblances between Helena and him are really superficial similarities that make the differences more apparent. These differences are now worth noting.

Both characters are young and energetic, but not in the same way. Helena reflects a life force that works for the regeneration of society. Parolles, on the other hand, possesses all the failings characteristic of youth: the love of passing fashions, irresponsibility, and moral cowardice. He is, in short, the dramatic actualization of all the King's fears about the characteristics of the younger generation, who seem “But goers backward” (I.ii.48). Both Helena and Parolles, left to fend for themselves in the world, depend for success upon their wit and initiative: their art. But the braggart's art covers nature with a superficial stain; he depends upon fashionable superfluities to hide the liar and fool beneath. Conversely, Helena's art uses, rather than covers, nature: she cures the King by utilizing her knowledge of medicine, and she saves Bertram by productively directing his natural impulses. Helena's art does, like Parolles', make use of deception. Many of the words that she addresses to the sick King are intended to sound much like the mumbo-jumbo of a witch-doctor (cf. II.i.163-171), and she very elaborately tricks Bertram. But since deception is a necessary element of all art, there are both good and bad kinds of deception, a fact which this play makes perfectly clear. It is wrong, for example, for Parolles to assume the dress of a courtier-soldier and deceive Bertram, but it is right for Helena to assume the undress of Diana and deceive him. And as deception can sometimes achieve good, so truth can, upon occasion, do great harm: all the truthful information that Parolles gives to his “Muskos” captors is a betrayal of his duty as a soldier to remain silent.

But however ignoble Parolles' attitude and conduct in this instance may be, however destructive his designs may appear, he still escapes death. Nothing that he does justifies his salvation, but that salvation is granted nevertheless. Parolles is undoubtedly lucky. Yet he is not the only character in All's Well who fares better than he deserves, for Bertram, too, is eventually saved from ruin, in spite of all that he does to precipitate it. Like Parolles before him, he experiences one of the great ironies of life—that man, who so often would do great harm to himself and others by acting rashly, is now and again granted second chances, to right these wrongs. There is usually no way of predicting when these chances will come, or why; but come they do. And whether one considers them miracles or merely the result of life's complexity is not important. What matters is that one make the most of them, realizing that rewards are not always commensurate with virtues. In the dramatic world of All's Well, as in life, there is no formula for finding happiness, only the fact that it comes, and passes, unpredictably through the web of life that is “a mingled yarn, good and ill together” (IV.iii.83-84). When happiness is encountered, questions about its advent are unnecessary, for it is enough to know all's well that ends well; and when it passes, questions about its sources are unanswerable: “as we are ourselves, what things are we!” (IV. iii. 23-24). One cannot know why. But one can learn that however corrupt man may seem, he may yet be saved. Parolles, mercifully granted a new life, resolves to become a new man. Bertram, who would have sealed himself off from the world of meaningful human relationships, is brought back to that world by the love and forgiveness of one whom he so foolishly considered a “clog”. And in being so reconciled to life, the young Count is able to see that his earlier judgment has been a great, though not irreconcilable error. Miraculously given another chance, Bertram chooses to expunge from his character all traces of that “stain of soldier” which he derived from the companionship of Parolles.

Notes

1. This view opposes most critical estimations of Parolles, which treat him very harshly. Of those critics who have attacked Parolles' effectiveness as a dramatic creation, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson are the most violently critical. In their “Introduction” to the New Cambridge Shakespeare All's Well (Cambridge University Press, 1929), they dismiss Parolles as “on the whole, with all his concern in the play, about the inanest of all Shakespeare's inventions” (p. xxiv). Other critics prominent in the attack against this braggart are: G. K. Hunter in his “Introduction” to All's Well, The New Arden Shakespeare (Methuen and Co., 1959), pp. xlvii-xlviii; Brander Matthews, Shakespere As a Playwright (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), p. 225; and Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare (Henry Holt and Co., 1939), p. 213. Recently, however, dissent against Parolles’ general critical condemnation has come from G. Wilson Knight, The Sovereign Flower (Barnes and Noble, 1958), pp. 93-160; A. P. Rossiter, Angel With Horns, ed. Graham Storey (Theatre Arts Books, 1961), pp. 82-107; and E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (University of Toronto Press, 1950), pp. 109-110.

2. All references to All's Well are from Hardin Craig's, The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Scott Foresman and Co., 1961).

3. This observation cannot be conclusively proven by any references in the text of the play, but Parolles acts like a young man, and his youth is nearly a thematic necessity.