SOURCE: Bergeron, David M. “The Structure of Healing in All's Well That Ends Well.” South Atlantic Bulletin 37, no. 4 (November 1972): 25-34.

[In the following essay, Bergeron examines the theme of healing in All's Well That Ends Well, focusing on Helena's physical healing of the King and the metaphorical healing of Bertram and Parolles.]

Since the time of W. W. Lawrence's Shakespeare's Problem Comedies numerous critics and interpreters of All's Well That Ends Well have written about the structure of the play. An excellent summary of the various critical approaches is found in Joseph Price's recent book in which Price also offers his own view: “He [Shakespeare] has unified the play through its structure: the play is tightly knit through parallels, parodies, anticipations, and commentaries.”¹ From a different viewpoint Professor Toole argues that “the structure of the play is based on a humanistic modification of the structure of the morality play.”² Much earlier Miss Bradbrook had offered a different analysis of the play's structure.³ One could go on rounding up the critics, but the point is that the study of this play's structure offers an excellent way of getting at the play's meaning. And few critics deny the skill of construction of All's Well, some in fact granting that that is the play's only claim on our attention.

While I can appreciate the ideas about structure proposed by several critics, I would like to offer another approach, one that argues that structure and theme ultimately become united in the play. Lawrence, of course, had argued that the play has two distinct movements; I accept that but would redefine the movements, and here my analysis is somewhat indebted and parallel to Robert Hunter's admirable essay on the play.⁴ The first movement, comprising Act I to Act II.iii, is, of course, the healing of the King by Helena; it is crucial to the dramatic development of the play and leads logically (and structurally) to the second movement, which includes II.iii through Act V and which I would call the “healing” of Bertram. This second part of the structure also contains within it another healing process, namely, the “healing” of Parolles in the subaction. The curing of Parolles is necessary if any cure is to be achieved in Bertram. Another way of stating the structural movement of the healing process is to see the dramatist moving from the literal healing of the King to the metaphorical curing of Bertram and Parolles; that is, from actual physical illness to something abstract, an infection of the spirit. The structure of healing offers an adequate antidote to those who see only “darkness” and “bitterness” in the tone of the play, because what this structure implies and anticipates is the comic resolution of the drama—tragic potential is snuffed out in the process of restoring and curing.

With all the characters dressed in black, an ominous mood opens the play; it is expanded by the revelations that the Countess' husband has died, that Bertram's leaving her can be likened to the burial of a second husband, that the King has a seemingly incurable fistula, and that Helena's father, a physician himself, was no proof against mortality. The King, according to Lafeu, has abandoned his physicians “under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.” (I.i.15-16)⁵ Loss of hope, decay, death, all conspire to endow the play with a bleak opening—a sense of threat hangs over the lives of the characters. What is being established by the dramatist is the dramatic problem that must be resolved; a sense of renewal or healing is precisely what is needed if this dark world is to be translated into something brighter. But is the opening of this comedy radically different from the threatening atmosphere that opens A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which Hermia faces possible death, or marriage to one she does not love, or austerity and the single life in a convent, if she does not bend to the will of her father, Egeus? Or is it different from the anticipated plight of Aegeon, in The Comedy of Errors, who faces the “doom of death” by virtue of being a Syracusian in the town of Ephesus? The opening situation in All's Well does in fact reflect a dramatic technique observed several times in the earlier, “happy” comedies. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the dramatist establishes a predicament that is reversible, that is susceptible of a comic resolution, whether that includes a pilgrimage to the green world or some other means of achieving the desired end.

Within the portrait of death and decay in the opening scene there are embryonic seeds of possible renewal. The Countess observes that if Helena's father, Gerard de Narbon, were alive, he could doubtless be the cause of the “death of the king's disease.” Because Helena is the descendant of this ancient physician, she offers the possibility of having some inherited means of achieving restoration. After the conversation with Parolles in which he argues colorfully against virginity—“It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity” (1. 136)—Helena decides on her mission: “… who ever strove / To show her merit, that did miss her love? / The king's disease—my project may deceive me, / But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me.” (I.i.241-244) Parolles, is, of course, correct: renewal can come in nature only if virginity is not preserved; in this way the cycle of life can displace the advent of death.

Encountering Bertram in scene ii, the King again assesses his condition, wishing that he had the “corporal soundness” of his former days, and asserting that if the old physician were living, he “would try him yet.” (1. 72) Reflecting further on his plight, the King says: “… nature and sickness / Debate it at their leisure. …” (11. 74-5) Implied in the statement is a sense of conflict, and one wonders if the debate of nature and sickness does not also eventually operate in Bertram's situation, at least metaphorically. In I.iii Helena is referred to as being “sick” in love, but this predicament is both natural and curable; Helena clearly knows wherein lies the cure. She confesses to the Countess her love for Bertram and determines to go to Paris to seek the cure of the King, using some of her father's remedies, admitting that it is her desire for Bertram that made her think of “Paris and the medicine and the king. …” (1. 239) From the outset Helena is a tissue of mixed motivations, but the dramatist has established the priorities: cure the King first; then Bertram may be more worthily sought.

As the soldiers take their leave of the King in the opening of Act II, one of them expresses the hope that when they return they will find “your grace in health.” (II.i.7) Helena is to see to it that the King finds health through grace, her saving, healing grace. She has to argue against his natural obstinacy at trying yet another cure, but his own sense of wonder revives in the encounter with Helena, who argues: “Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.” (II.i.157) The King yields to the “blessed spirit” he sees working in and through her, this Helena who claims that “Health shall live free and sickness freely die.” (1. 171) For trying her skill Helena accepts the prospect of death if she fails, while extracting her terms if she is successful; namely, that she have free choice in a husband, to which the King agrees. As we know, the cure is successful, and Lafeu sees the hand of heaven working through the event, refuting the argument of those who say “miracles are past. …” (II.iii.1) The King refers to his “healthful hand” and to his “banish'd sense” that has been repealed. Helena and the others ascribe this miracle to heaven; her first mission is thus complete, but it carries with it the seed of the next major dramatic problem: Bertram's refusal to accept Helena as his wife.

Bertram clearly joins the two dramatic problems of the play when he responds to the King's statement that Helena has raised him from his sickly bed: “But follows it, my lord, to bring me down / Must answer for your raising?” (II.iii.119-120) Bertram fears the “corruption” of marrying one lower than himself, not of course recognizing that it is his spirit that is corrupted already and in need of healing. The whole encounter here with the reluctant man and the king's definition of where true nobility exists (not in inheritance but in virtuous deeds) echoes the situation in Chaucer's “Wife of Bath's Tale,” and indeed the play in several ways offers a definition of “gentillesse.” Ironically, Bertram views Helena as the “loathly lady” without any genuine basis for such a judgment. That the problem is Bertram himself is made explicit in the King's comment: “Here, take her hand, / Proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift. …” (11. 157-8) The immaturity of this “boy” is part of what needs curing. Earlier in the play the King, quoting Bertram's father, generalized about this younger generation “‘whose judgments are / Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies / Expire before their fashions.’” (I.ii.61-3) Anticipating the curing or growth that is possible, Helena had earlier observed: “The court's a learning place. …” (I.i.191) Thus Bertram, who takes Helena's hand but will not bed her, who will observe the outward ceremony of marriage but not the spiritual or physical reality, presents himself as one in need of healing—the remainder of the dramatic structure outlines the process of curing.

Insensitive to the extreme is Bertram's leave-taking of Helena, whom he refers to as his “clog.” (II.v.58) All of Helena's protestations of love and obedience and fidelity are coldly met by Bertram who dismisses them quickly. His lack of concern is underscored in the letter sent to his mother that establishes the seemingly impossible conditions on which he will accept Helena. (III.ii) Helena has, of course, already conquered insuperable odds in her healing of the King; thus she determines to set forth on another voyage of curing so that she might rightfully gain what is hers—this “rash and unbridled boy,” as the Countess calls Bertram. While Bertram joins the army of Mars, willing to wage war but not love (“A lover of thy [Mars's] drum, hater of love” [III.iii.11]), to commit himself to a martial but not a marital love, Helena takes on the guise of a pilgrim, both a sign of her quest (complete with religious connotation) and a dramatic means of passing unobserved in Bertram's midst. She claims in her letter: “He is too good and fair for death and me; / Whom I myself embrace, to set him free.” (III.iv.16-17) Despite Helena's overstatement the point is valid: Bertram in order to be saved must be set free from his own prideful, selfish self. Or as his mother puts it:

                    What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive,
Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear
And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
Of greatest justice.

(III.iv.25-29)

The “her” doubtless refers to Helena whose prayers have been efficacious in healing the king and whose effort shall “reprieve” (heal) Bertram.

By the end of the third act Helena has revealed her identity to the Widow in Florence where she has come in search of Bertram, and she plans her “bed-trick,” substituting herself for the Widow's daughter Diana. The contrivance of the bed-trick has been much criticized, and it is not the best possible dramatic solution to the problem. It was probably less difficult for Shakespeare's audience to accept; but had it produced any problem or outrage, the dramatist would not also have used it in Measure for Measure. Helena senses no moral problem here and certainly no legal one as she insists that it is “a lawful deed,” a simple reclamation of what is hers by right of marriage. The moral difficulty is with Bertram, who sets out to seduce Diana. When Diana reminds him of his vows (legal and moral) to his wife, Bertram says that he was compelled to marriage and that he truly loves Diana. Ironically, Bertram reveals himself in his response to Diana's questions and comments on love:

Be not so holy-cruel: love is holy;
And my integrity ne'er knew the crafts
That you do charge men with. Stand no more off,
But give thyself unto my sick desires,
Who then recover. …

(IV.ii.32-36)

Bertram says more than he knows when he speaks of his “sick desires”; he is ripe for curing. When he does give himself over to Helena (thinking that it is Diana of course), he ironically is ready for recovery. The spiritual mysteries of healing of the King are reduced to the “profane,” practical, physical means of curing Bertram. And yet it is a kind of miracle, putting him on the road to health.

After the interview with Diana, Bertram receives the letter that his mother has sent him chiding him severely for his action; it “stings his nature,” according to the Second Lord, who says further: “on the reading it he changed almost into another man.” (IV.iii.4) His conscience is capable of being pricked—a hopeful sign for the possibility of healing. Word also comes that Helena has died and now sings in heaven. (1. 63) The physician herself has taken on the shroud of mortality, or so it seems; but, of course, she is simply putting on another disguise, part of her strategy, which she explains to the Widow in IV.iv. Again Helena assigns to heaven the power of what has happened as she says to the Widow: “doubt not but Heaven / Hath brought me up to be your daughter's dower, / As it hath fated her to be my motive / And helper to a husband.” (IV.iv.18-21) Helena remains a curious conjunction of different motives and impulses; like the earlier pilgrims along the road to Canterbury she marches to two voices—“sacred” and “profane,” ascribing to sacred forces the accomplishment of her profane, earthly task. In the next scene the clown refers to her as having “the herb of grace” (IV.v.18)—in every way she qualifies as a physician. Helena herself anticipates hopeful change in the circumstances of the characters when she says: “But with the word the time will bring on summer, / When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns, / And be as sweet as sharp.” (IV.iv.31-33) She enunciates the doctrine of restoration and healing, of ending the winter's tale and bringing on summer. Inherent in the statement is a rough definition of comedy—in comedy the healing herb of grace works like magic. What Helena is busy doing is suiting form to the conceit, finding an adequate means (whether it involves a bed substitution or feigned death) to bring about renewal, because all is well that ends well.

The last scene of the play offers enough evidence to let us know that there is still a struggle between the “old” and “new” Bertram, that perhaps the patient is not fully cured. As the elders, the Countess, the King, and Lafeu, observe in the opening lines of the scene, Bertram has committed a great folly, a “natural rebellion,” “but to himself / The greatest wrong of all” (V.iii.14-15), in his earlier denial of Helena, now reputedly dead. The King is willing to pardon Bertram, to bury the “incensing relics” of his offense, to bury the old Bertram and grant life to the new one—the sense of restoration permeates the opening of the scene. Indeed the King greets him: “All is whole.” (1. 37) Bertram admits his guilt: “… she whom all men praised and whom myself, / Since I have lost, have loved, was in mine eye / The dust that did offend it.” (11. 53-55) There is a new humility in what Bertram says, and that bodes well for his possible cure. Having “lost” Helena, he has found his love for her which, while it seems a tragically late recognition, is better than none at all. Perhaps he is also in the process of losing himself in order to find himself. He is now being offered Lafeu's daughter, a certain indication that the other characters see in him a more mature, chastened person.

But when Bertram gives to Lafeu's daughter the ring last seen on Helena's hand, the scene erupts and the tables are turned on him. Guards haul Bertram away; the King, thinking that possibly Bertram has killed Helena, thanks heaven for revealing this situation. Bertram's defense of himself is neither always honest nor admirable; the former self still lurks within his body. But the testimony of Diana and Parolles does force him finally to admit the “truth” of his relationship with Diana. Thus Diana, who knows that Helena lives, functions dramatically and thematically to offer a final test for Bertram, perhaps a refining fire to burn away the remaining dross, the final movement of the curing process. Diana clearly does the bidding of the master physician.⁶ Bertram is stretched out on this tough rack for his own ultimate benefit. And with Diana's riddle (11. 301-305), the “dead” Helena is resurrected, a concrete example of renewal of life, of summer coming in. Bertram asks for pardon; and, learning that Helena has fulfilled his conditions, he promises to “love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.” (1. 317) Bertram's change, which strikes many critics as too sudden and implausible, seems dramatically logical considering the process of healing that has been going on for some time. If he is not wholly cured, he is, like the men of Navarre in Love's Labour's Lost, at least on the right road to recovery, and we must take his words as genuine and at their face value. The physician has triumphed again, this time curing the infected, obstinate spirit of Bertram, reducing him to a saving humility and an acceptance of love. Bertram is given a second chance, the unique opportunity afforded by comedy.

Assisting, anticipating, and parodying Bertram is his friend Parolles, whom the Countess describes as “a very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness.” (III.ii.89) He is neither the cause of Bertram's corruption nor the cause of his cure, but he is involved in both. He encourages Bertram's worst qualities, but finally he assists the cure by exposing himself and illustrating how unworthy of Bertram's esteem he is. Crucial to Bertram's new maturity is the recognition of his own faulty judgment concerning Parolles, paving the way for him also to correct his assessment of Helena.

Though the second movement of the play focuses on the healing of Bertram, it includes the curing of Parolles, which complements and parodies Bertram's restoration. In II.iii, the scene that marks the end of the play's first movement and the beginning of the second, the wise Lafeu encounters Parolles and sees through him immediately, understanding Parolles' affectation, his pretense, and his lack of substance. Lafeu says to Parolles: “Yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burthen. I have now found thee; when I lose thee again, I care not. …” (II.iii.213-216) What Lafeu can see the immature Bertram cannot; therefore, Bertram is perplexed in II.v when Lafeu and Parolles engage in a verbal altercation. Using again the image of clothes, Lafeu asks who is Parolles' tailor and says to Bertram: “… Believe this of me, there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes. Trust him not in matter of heavy consequence. …” (II.v.47-50)

But Bertram's vision is not corrected nor Parolles put on the road to health until some of his fellow soldiers decide to trick and expose this boastful coward. Bertram asks incredulously: “Do you think I am so far deceived in him?” (III.vi.6) Like Helena with her strategy, the soldiers plot a means of catching Parolles. As the First Lord observes: “He was first smoked by the old lord Lafeu: when his disguise and he is parted, tell me what a sprat you shall find him. …” (11. 111-113) It is instructive to note how the plan against Parolles parallels Helena's own efforts as in the very next scene (III.vii) she reveals her identity to the Widow and sets forth the strategy of taking Diana's place in bed.

Parolles provides us almost more than we have a right to expect as the dramatist explores dramatic irony in removing the masquerade in IV.i and IV.iii. Like Falstaff, who would hack his own sword to make it seem that he has done great battle, so Parolles contemplates what he might have to show for his supposed military venture. He says, for example: “I must give myself some hurts, and say I got them in exploit. …” (IV.i.40-41) Later with an unconscious linking to the clothes image he ponders: “I would the cutting of my garments could serve the turn. …” (1. 50); “Or to drown my clothes, and say I was stripped.” (1. 56) When he is “captured,” he immediately begs for his life and promises to reveal all the secrets of the camp. He is as good as his word in IV.iii. While Parolles is being trapped by the soldiers, Bertram is being ensnared by Diana and Helena; again Parolles' situation parallels and parodies the main action. When the full exposure comes in IV.iii, the First Lord reminds Bertram that he has been deceived about Parolles who “had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf. …” (11. 162-163) And the Second Lord vows that he will “never trust a man again for keeping his sword clean, nor believe he can have every thing in him by wearing his apparel neatly.” (11. 165-167) Parolles' clothes will no longer suffice—his garments are metaphorically cut off and he is stripped. All of which is a necessary prelude to his healing. Bertram surrenders his illusion about Parolles as Parolles casts off his outer self and acknowledges the inner reality.

With a new-found humility Parolles says: “Captain I'll be no more; / But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft / As captain shall: simply the thing I am / Shall make me live. …” (IV.iii.367-370) The prideful, boastful, and cowardly infected spirit is now on the mend, the humbling process being the first step. The change pervades Parolles' comment to the Clown: “I have ere now, sir, been better known to you, when I have held familiarity with fresher clothes; but I am now sir, muddied in fortune's mood. …” (V.ii2-5) In an exchange that echoes their meeting in II.iii, Parolles greets Lafeu: “O my good Lord, you were the first that found me!” To which Lafeu replies: “Was I, in sooth? and I was the first that lost thee.” (V.ii.44-47) Lafeu had of course found him out and “lost” him as an insignificant knave. But Parolles has lost himself and therefore found himself, the real self without masquerade, without garments. Parolles urges Lafeu to bring him “in some grace”; though Lafeu dismisses the notion with a quibble, there is an appropriateness for the term. Helena had used the “herb of grace,” and there is a kind of grace now descending on Parolles—the grace of seeing himself as he is, and Lafeu had started the whole process. To be in this state of grace is, of course, to be healed. Though Lafeu still regards Parolles as something of a knave, he does extend kindness to him: “You shall eat; go to, follow.” (1. 58) To which Parolles can respond with unvarnished simplicity and an earned humility: “I praise God for you.” (1. 59) Parolles' cure forecasts Bertram's final restoration in V.iii. Infected spirits are as susceptible to healing as is the King's fistula. The fever of pride has to be broken, however, before medicinal grace can be effectual—Bertram and Parolles illustrate this principle.

By the end of the play it is obvious that the structure has become synonymous with one of the play's principal themes; this structural and thematic unity represents part of the play's achievement. The drama moves from an initial threat of decay and sickness to renewal—a cured King and a healed Bertram and Parolles. The old self is repealed and a new or truer self emerges. As individuals are healed, so is the larger world of the play: Rousillon is more flourishing at the end than at the beginning of the drama. To be healed is to have another chance, and this comedy provides that opportunity. In the rotten and fractured world of a play like Hamlet one is consumed in the process of trying to achieve a healing, a putting of time back in joint. But in All's Well That Ends Well the master physician Helena is able to achieve her own personal desires while ordering the disordered world—the physician survives to enjoy and benefit from the cure. Such is the unique possibility of comedy.⁷

Notes

1. Joseph Price The Unfortunate Comedy: A Study of “All's Well That Ends Well” and Its Critics (Toronto, 1968), p. 171.

2. William B. Toole, Shakespeare's Problem Plays: Studies in Form and Meaning (The Hague, 1966), p. 130.

3. Muriel Bradbrook, “Virtue is the True Nobility: A Study of the Structure of All's Well,” RES, [Review of English Studies] 1 (1950), 289-301.

4. Robert G. Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness (New York, 1965), pp. 106-131.

5. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig (Chicago, 1961). All quotations are from this edition.

6. A different approach to the function of Diana and the other major figures is found in my essay “The Mythical Structure of All's Well That Ends Well,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language (forthcoming).

7. A shorter version of this paper was read at the English III section of the SAMLA meeting in November, 1970.