SOURCE: Thomas, Vivian. “Virtue and Honour in All's Well That Ends Well.” In The Moral Universe of Shakespeare's Problems Plays, pp. 140-72. London: Croom Helm, 1987.

[In the following essay, Thomas stresses Shakespeare's deeply ambiguous treatment of honor and virtue in All's Well That Ends Well and claims that the play features a clash of personal and public moral perspectives that remain largely unresolved at its conclusion.]

A striking feature of All's Well is the way in which the play opens by specifying relationships and engaging the theme of virtue as an intrinsic quality which may be complementary to or in conflict with nominal status. In the opening line of the play the Countess expresses sorrow at the imminent departure of Bertram, but does so by emphasising the fundamental nature of family bonds: ‘In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband’. Bertram acknowledges his debt of affection to his dead father but counterbalances it with his duty to the King and his ‘subjection’ (line 5). However, this statement of Bertram's is to sound like a hollow formula in the light of his later disregard of the King's authority. No sooner has Bertram expressed himself formally than Lafew speaks of the King as a ‘husband’ to the Countess and ‘father’ to Bertram: formal bonds are to be affective ties. Lafew's confident reassurance to the Countess is based on knowledge of the King's virtue and her desert: ‘He that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you, whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted, rather than lack it where there is such abundance’ (I.i. 7-10).

The pattern is continued a few lines later with the first reference to Helena. She too has lost a father and has become the adoptive daughter of the Countess. Before extolling her virtues the Countess makes a remarkable statement about Helena's gifted father. Although, as Lafew comments, ‘he was skilful enough to have liv'd still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality’ (I.i. 28-9) the Countess describes him as one ‘whose skill was almost as great as his honesty’ (I.i. 17-18). Immediately there is a weighing and balancing of admirable qualities: if this man was famous as a physician he must have been a man of total integrity for his honesty to surpass his skill. The implication is that honesty is valued even above life-saving skills. Characteristic of the problem plays is the way in which we plunge into a consideration of values.

The relationship between inherited qualities and education is developed by the Countess in her praise of Helena: ‘I have those hopes of her good that her education promises her dispositions she inherits—which makes fair gifts fairer’ (I.i. 36-8). Where skills and talents are cultivated but are at the disposal of an ‘unclean mind’ they are not to be admired. Rather, ‘they are virtues and traitors too’ (I.i. 40). The suggestion that talent and honesty do not always go together is followed by an awareness that integrity is not necessarily inherited. The Countess' farewell to Bertram expresses hope rather than certainty that he will prove worthy of his breeding:

Be thou bless'd, Bertram, and succeed thy father
In manners as in shape! Thy blood and virtue
Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright!

(I.i. 57-60)

The Countess is aware that Bertram is on the brink of being tested for the first time in his life. His inexperience is revealed in her plea to Lafew:

'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
Advise him.

(I.i. 67-8)

If the hope but uncertainty of inherited qualities is suggested by the Countess' speech, along with an awareness of the need for education and experience to bring intrinsic qualities to fruition, the idea of the child as preserver of the parent's reputation is brought out by Lafew's farewell to Helena: ‘Farewell, pretty lady; you must hold the credit of your father’ (line 75). It is ironic that Helena's tears are not for her famous father because she has already forgotten him. Indeed, the impression made by Bertram on her imagination is so powerful that it has erased all other images. Helena's soliloquy, in which she gives vent to her adoration of Bertram, possesses an ease and fluency which contrasts with the compacted speeches that precede it: analysis of concepts and values gives way to free flowing verse which is expressive of Helena's idealised love of Bertram:

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.
Th' ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In out heart's table—heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics.

(I.i. 82-96)

The immediate effect of this speech is to create a sense of surprise or incongruity. Helena's ‘idolatrous fancy’ seems strikingly at odds with Bertram's cold and detached comment to her ‘Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her’ (I.i. 73-4). Not only are they separated by a social gulf, but Bertram seems unaware of her as a young woman. Moreover, there is nothing in the early exchanges to suggest why Bertram should attract such admiration—other than the fact that he is a handsome young man. That Helena is not just a silly young girl is made clear by her shrewd assessment of Parolles: she recognises that he is a ‘liar’, ‘fool’ and ‘coward’, but rather than feeling contemptuous towards him she implies that these qualities don't create an altogether unattractive character. Helena quickly routs Parolles in a battle of wits which reveals an ease of manner that enables her to cope admirably with his bawdy talk and self-importance. It is her resilience and strength of character which are manifested in the closing speech of the scene:

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
.....The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes, and kiss like native things.

(I.i. 212-19)

Here Helena expounds a philosophy to underpin her action. Leaving everything to heaven often serves as a pretext for inaction; and frequently seemingly disparate things are brought together and conjoined. If the audience feels any scepticism at this stage it is not about her determination to be active but rather about the worth of Bertram. Has this young woman so idealised the object of her love that he will not prove worth the effort? Significantly, her enthusiastic description of him is confined to physical characteristics: the comments of the Countess have been sufficient to create an awareness of the possibility of a discrepancy between intrinsic and extrinsic qualities. Moments later the King directs the attention of the audience back to this duality with its potential for conflict:

                                        Youth, thou bear'st thy father's face;
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,
Hath well compos'd thee. Thy father's moral parts
Mayest thou inherit too!

(I.ii. 19-22)

The King hopes rather than assumes that Bertram will inherit his father's qualities.

When the King recalls Bertram's father he conveys a genuine sense of loss: there is no feeling of respectful sentiment being the due of the dead, but rather a picture is created of a man remarkable for humour, tact and humanity. And when the King reaches the climax of his praise it comes as something of a surprise: his greatest virtue was an ability to communicate so easily with men of all social levels that they felt comfortable with him, indeed as if they were dealing with their social equal:

                                                                      Who were below him
He us'd as creatures of another place,
And bow'd his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times;
Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now
But goers backward.

(I.ii. 41-8)

The quality for which Bertram's father is most praised will be found most markedly absent in Bertram. But the King's speech suggests that Bertram should find it easier to shine as a consequence of the falling away in the present generation. The King undoubtedly creates a sense of two distinct eras, with the present being inferior to the former. While this could easily appear to be part of the traditional expression that things are no longer what they were, there is a feeling that the King is not merely responding as an ageing man idealising the past. One of the minor links between the problem plays is criticism of the obsession with the new-fangled: Ulysses makes the point in Troilus and Cressida (III.iii. 175-6); and so too does the disguised Duke in Measure for Measure (III.ii. 217-20). Here the King attributes the view to Bertram's father:

                                        ‘Let me not live,’ quoth he,
‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain; whose judgements are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions.’

(I.ii. 58-63)

Just as in the opening scene the fathers of Bertram and Helena are linked, the King turns to ask how long it has been since the death of the physician who was ‘much fam'd’ (I.ii. 71). The King's welcome to Bertram is concluded in a manner which expresses the emotional bond which binds them through the father-friend:

                                                  Welcome, count;
My son's no dearer.

(I.ii. 75-6)

So it is that both scenes focus sharply on human qualities through recollections of Bertram's father and the father of Helena.

While the question of Bertram's worth remains open, Helena's virtue is placed beyond question. On hearing of Helena's love of Bertram the Countess makes clear her estimation of her adopted daughter.

Her father bequeath'd her to me, and she herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as much love as she finds; there is more owing her than is paid, and more shall be paid her than she'll demand.

(I.iii. 97-101)

Moreover, the Countess insists that her feelings towards her adopted daughter are as great as those for her natural son. In expressing this feeling Shakespeare has the Countess employ his favourite source of imagery: horticulture (also used at a critical moment in Measure for Measure but virtually absent from Troilus and Cressida):

                                                  I say I am your mother,
And put you in the catalogue of those
That were enwombed mine. 'Tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds.

(I.iii. 137-41)

This reference to ‘foreign seeds’ is critical, because for Bertram there can be no question of social equality between people of unequal descent. Whereas the Countess enthusiastically accepts Helena as her own, and eagerly embraces the prospect of her marriage to Bertram, and the King praises Bertram's father for his natural humility which enabled men of inferior birth to feel that they were being treated as equals, Bertram appears to have total contempt for such values. He exhibits a powerful sense of social superiority. However, before revealing his attitude in this important sphere Bertram expresses an enthusiasm for the value of military honour. He fears that he will be forced to stay at court ‘Till honour be bought up’ (II.i. 32).

When he is chosen by Helena he is not only vigorous in expressing his dislike of the proposal, but is positively insolent in responding to the King's question:

                                                                                Know'st thou not, Bertram,
What she has done for me?
                                                                                Yes, my good lord,
But never hope to know why I should marry her.

(II.iii. 108-10)

Here is a clear breach of decorum which Bertram reiterates before going on to make the basis of his defiance clear:

                                                  I know her well:
She had her breeding at my father's charge—
A poor physician's daughter my wife! Disdain
Rather corrupt me ever!

(II.iii. 113-16)

A great deal of special pleading has been made on Bertram's behalf—he is immature, too shocked to respond more cautiously, bitterly disappointed at being deprived of the excitement of being a young man at court and going off to the wars, etc.—but Shakespeare could hardly have made this character's feelings more explicit and unambiguous. To marry someone of Helena's social standing would be to suffer dishonour regardless of her personal qualities. Clearly for Bertram, unlike the King and his mother and father, status is everything; personal qualities are irrelevant. The King's reply constitutes a philosophical generalisation but is also a gentle attempt to persuade Bertram that he is mistaken:

'Tis only title thou disdain'st in her, the which
I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods,
Of colour, weight, and heat, pour'd all together,
Would quite confound distinction, yet stands off
In differences so mighty. If she be
All that is virtuous, save what thou dislik'st—
A poor physician's daughter—thou dislik'st
Of virtue for the name. But do not so.
From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by th'doer's deed.
Where great additions swell's and virtue none,
It is a dropsied honour. Good alone
Is good, without a name; vileness is so:
The property by what it is should go,
Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;
In these to nature she's immediate heir,
And these breed honour; that is honour's scorn
Which challenges itself as honour's born
And is not like the sire. Honours thrive
When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our foregoers. The mere word's a slave,
Debosh'd on every tomb, on every grave
A lying trophy, and as oft is dumb,
Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb
Of honour'd bones indeed. What should be said?
If thou canst like this creature as a maid,
I can create the rest. Virtue and she
Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.

(II.iii. 117-44)

The King's response to Bertram is astonishing for its powerful insistence that assessment of human worth must be made in terms of character and action (‘is’, ‘deed’, ‘breed’, ‘acts’, all operate to generate a sense of action) rather than by means of social status or breeding. Starting at the fundamental physiological level the King makes a statement of fact that blood cannot be distinguished in terms of social status. Hence when the term ‘blood’ is being used as a means of making social distinctions it is operating as a metaphor not as a description of physiological reality. The King argues that the comparison must be between actions regardless of the status of the actors. He then goes one step further: high social standing cannot transform a bad action into a good deed. Finally, he insists that Helena has derived outstanding qualities from nature, which she may transmit to the next generation and so produce genuine honour, as opposed to the honour of title unsupported by virtuous character.

It is difficult to think of another speech in the whole of Shakespeare which sets forth this ‘democratic’ argument with such force and clarity. It is all the more remarkable coming from the King: a man who owes his position to inheritance of title. The argument does not necessarily undermine the principle of inheritance, the existence of an aristocracy or a hierarchical society, but it does imply that title and high status require virtuous behaviour—honour goes with actions not title—and that there should be no barrier to upward social mobility: not every virtuous and beautiful young woman can become a countess, but when she is chosen by a nobleman or is endowed with wealth (as Helena is by the King) there is no possible justification of citing humble birth as a means of casting doubt on the acceptability of such a marriage. The King in Shakespeare's source material does have momentary qualms about the marriage on social grounds; Shakespeare's King is unequivocal in his dismissal of the values enunciated by Bertram.

Bertram's answer to the King's speech is surprising. When he insists, ‘I cannot love her nor will strive to do't’ (II.iii. 145), not only is he rejecting the social ethos advanced by the King, but he is also denying a vital social principle in his society: his duty to his monarch. The King reminds Bertram of this but not before Helena has attempted to relinquish her reward and the King has insisted that fulfilling his side of the bargain is a matter of honour:

My honour's at the stake, which to defeat,
I must produce my power. Here, take her hand,
Proud, scornful boy, unworthy this good gift,
That dost in vile misprision shackle up
My love and her desert; that canst not dream
We, poising us in her defective scale,
Shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know
It is in us to plant thine honour where
We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt;
Obey our will which travails in thy good;
Believe not thy disdain, but presently
Do thine own fortunes that obedient right
Which both thy duty owes and our power claims;
Or I will throw thee from my care for ever
Into the staggers and the careless lapse
Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate
Loosing upon thee in the name of justice,
Without all terms of pity. Speak. Thine answer.

(II.iii. 149-66)

Only after Bertram has been warned that he will have no significant place in the court life of his society does he submit to the King's demand. What in the source material was a private transaction behind closed doors is in Shakespeare's play a public occasion which is embarrassing and humiliating to all three participants. Bertram's retreat is anything but dignified and stems quite clearly from a recognition of his own dependence on the King's favour:

Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit
My fancy to your eyes. When I consider
What great creation and what dole of honour
Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late
Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now
The praised of the king; who, so ennobled,
Is as 'twere born so.

(II.iii. 167-73)

Having reiterated his pledge to provide Helena with a handsome dowry (one that will make her more than Bertram's equal in terms of wealth) the King warns Bertram that his fortunes are inextricably tied to Helena:

                                                            As thou lov'st her
Thy love's to me religious; else, does err.

(II.iii. 182-3)

Clearly the King has less than total confidence in Bertram's willingness to be a ‘good’ husband without a strong incentive.

Thus, like the debate scene in Troilus and Cressida which begins with Priam setting out the costs of the war and the Greeks' offer of peace, and ends with Hector's astonishing turn about, this public occasion conveys a feeling of the perversity of human nature. As Hector sets forth an irrefutable case for ending the war before joining ranks with Troilus in the pursuit of ‘honour’, so too in this scene is there a feeling that Bertram has bowed to necessity but remains unconvinced of the validity of the social principles enunciated by the King. And what of Helena? The problem for the audience is to comprehend how she will be able to retain her feeling of love for Bertram after the treatment she has received in this scene. Can she still idolise him?

When Helena next appears it is to be informed by Parolles that she has to forgo the consummation of her marriage because Bertram has urgent business elsewhere. Helena's response is one of simple acceptance: ‘In everything I wait upon his will’ (II.iv. 52). Before Helena receives the remainder of her instructions from Bertram—to return to Rossillion where he will join her in two days—the audience has had the opportunity of seeing Parolles thoroughly exposed by Lafew, while being accepted as a worthy confidant by Bertram. Even after Lafew has insisted that ‘the soul of this man is his clothes’ (II.v. 43-4), Bertram remains convinced that Parolles ‘is very great in knowledge, and accordingly valiant’ (II.v. 7-8). Bertram, then, is singularly undiscerning: he lacks the ability to see through even such a transparent character as Parolles.

Bertram's attitude to Helena is one of contempt: as she advances to receive her instructions from him his terse comment is ‘Here comes my clog’ (II.v. 53). He then proceeds to lie to her and in response to her tentative plea for a kiss he dismisses her coldly. After making all possible allowances for Bertram's disappointment it is difficult to feel any sympathy for him. His behaviour towards Helena is callous. However, even after receiving the next blow—the riddling letter informing her that Bertram will never accept her as his wife until she has his ring and a child fathered by him—Helena expresses no antagonism towards Bertram. Rather she suffers great anxiety on his part and a sense of guilt that she has caused him to court danger in the wars:

                                                                                                    Poor lord, is't I
That chase thee from thy country, and expose
Those tender limbs of thine to the event
Of the none-sparing war?
.....Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
Whoever charges on his forward breast,
I am the caitiff that do hold him to't;
And though I kill him not, I am the cause
His death was so effected.

(III.ii. 102-16)

The contrast between the reactions of Helena and the Countess is striking. The Countess is direct in her chastisement of her son:

Nothing in France until he have no wife!
There's nothing here that is too good for him
But only she, and she deserves a lord
That twenty such rude boys might tend upon
And call her, hourly, mistress.

(III.ii. 78-82)

Moreover, she claims that honour is not interchangeable: the sum of honour cannot be augmented if it is lost in one sphere and gained in another: ‘tell him that his sword can never win / The honour that he loses’ (III.ii. 93-4). Ironically, when Bertram does return from the war the honour he has gained in battle does serve him well in gaining quittance for his treatment of Helena.

It is not merely Helena's tender care for Bertram which is so marked but the whole speech is delivered in a highly romanticised vein; she is still in love with what sounds like an ideal or idealised young man rather than the insensitive character who has treated her with contempt. There seems nothing selfish in Helena's love; her own bruises she can bear with equanimity; it is the prospect of Bertram suffering that she cannot endure. And yet, though her ostensible reason for leaving home is to encourage Bertram to return, Helena is soon in Florence on Bertram's doorstep planning yet again to win him. Although Helena's chief goal is to see Bertram safe and comfortable she is unable to quell her longing for him. Shakespeare has headed off any antagonism towards her by the Countess' comment that:

                                                                                                    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. 25-9)

This attitude is reinforced by the ladies of Florence who are full of admiration for Bertram's appearance but dislike his treatment of his wife and the attempt to seduce Diana. It is the young virgin herself who insists on placing moral considerations in the final estimation of a man: ‘if he were honester / He were much goodlier’ (III.v. 79-80). Likewise, Mariana in cautioning Diana against Bertram states: ‘the honour of a maid is her name, and no legacy is so rich as honesty’ (III.v. 12-13). Bertram, in contrast, sees honesty as Diana's only failing: ‘That's all the fault’ he replies in answer to the comment ‘But you say she's honest’ (III.vi. 107-8). Here is the topsy-turvy world of the dashing young nobleman: he gives his all on the battlefield to heap up honour, but in order to satisfy his lust is prepared to ruin a poor young virgin. In a play overflowing with references to worth and honour Shakespeare has created an awareness of the incongruities between scales of values. When Helena puts her proposal of the bed-trick before the widow she has to persuade her that there can be no question of improper behaviour. Despite her poverty the widow is proud of her ancestry claiming ‘And would not put my reputation now / In any staining act’ (III.vii. 6-7). In contrast to the reticence of the widow Helena has no doubt that Bertram will surrender his family ring in payment for Diana's virginity:

Now his important blood will naught deny
That she'll demand; a ring the country wears
That downward hath succeeded in his house
From son to son some four or five descents
Since the first father wore it. This ring he holds
In most rich choice; yet, in his idle fire,
To buy his will it would not seem too dear,
Howe'er repented after.

(III.vii. 21-8)

It is ironic that a man who stood first against marriage on the principle of high birth should be willing to part with a symbol of his family's honour for an hour of sexual gratification with a woman whom he disdains as a human being. The ring is of far greater symbolic significance than the drum ostensibly sought by Parolles. But the drum is merely a pretext for action that will win esteem; Parolles' difficulty is to acquire the symbol without risking his life. Unlike Bertram who possesses physical courage in abundance, Parolles is a natural coward. As he ruminates on his dilemma, one of the eavesdropping lords asks the question, ‘Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?’ (IV.i. 44-5) Rather than promoting a contempt for Parolles' brazenness, this comment rather creates an awareness of his self-knowledge. At no point in the play does Bertram ever display such a sense of insight into his own character: from first to last he appears to think of himself as an admirable fellow. Moreover, Parolles' exposure is highly comic as he unwittingly participates in a dialogue with his fellows. His vice is revealed in an atmosphere of amusement, whereas Bertram's exposure takes place in a formal situation which is untouched by comic elements. When Parolles is ‘captured’ his outburst is poignant as well as comic:

                                                                                          O, let me live,
And all the secrets of our camp I'll show,

(IV.i. 83-4)

Parolles' disgrace, as a soldier, is total. But when set beside Bertram's calculated wooing of Diana his response is understandably human. In the light of his later denunciation of Diana, Bertram's courtship is cynical in the extreme. Dismissing the ties of his enforced marriage he pledges undying love to the woman whom he intends to use:

I was compell'd to her, but I love thee
By love's own sweet constraint, and will for ever
Do thee all rights of service.

(IV.ii. 15-17)

As Diana wards him off Bertram's vows become more pressing; he insists:

And my integrity ne'er knew the crafts
That you do charge men with.

(IV.ii. 33-4)

No doubt, Bertram is a novice in this activity but he presses his case as persuasively as a seasoned seducer. Initially he refuses to part with his ring, but once Bertram recognises that it is the essential currency for the purchase of Diana's ‘honour’ he willingly accedes to her demand:

                                                                                Here, take my ring;
My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine,
And I'll be bid by thee.

(IV.ii. 51-3)

He is even prepared to anticipate the death of Helena as he promises marriage to Diana in the event of his wife's demise.

It might be argued that this behaviour is very natural for a handsome young man sojourning in foreign parts, but in the very next scene his peers discuss Bertram's action with extreme distaste. They criticise him both for his treatment of Helena and for his seduction of Diana:

He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence, of a most chaste renown, and this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour;

(IV.iii. 13-15)

The response of the First Lord on hearing of Bertram's escapade is to reflect ruefully on the nature of mankind: ‘As we are ourselves, what things are we!’ (IV.iii. 18-19) The Second Lord is eager to dispose of any suggestion that he is Bertram's confidant: ‘Let it be forbid, sir! So should I be a great deal of his act’ (IV.iii. 43-4). Finally, when he is informed of Helena's death the Second Lord has no doubt about Bertram's reaction to the news: ‘I am heartily sorry that he'll be glad of this’ (IV.iii. 61).

What becomes clear from this dialogue is that Bertram's behaviour is not characteristic of his fellows and that his treatment of Helena and his seduction of Diana are deplored by young men who admire him in many other ways. The Second Lord weighs Bertram's acquisition of honour in the military sphere with his loss of honour outside it: ‘The great dignity that his valour hath here acquir'd for him shall at home be encount'red with a shame as ample’ (IV.iii. 65-7). The response of the First Lord mitigates criticism of Bertram by generalising about human nature: ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipp'd them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish'd by our virtues' (IV.iii. 68-71). Bertram's exuberant entrance comes as a shock, especially as the dialogue between the two lords has revealed that on receipt of a letter from his mother Bertram had ‘chang'd almost into another man’ (IV.iii. 4). Rather than appearing contrite Bertram enumerates his evening's actions culminating with a boast about his seduction of Diana and the possibility of having made her pregnant: ‘I mean, the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it hereafter’ (IV.iii. 93-4).

Bertram's sense of self-satisfaction is diminished only when he discovers that Parolles has made a comprehensive confession. His immediate reaction is one of fear lest Parolles has revealed something unpleasant about him. As the blindfolded Parolles is put through his paces Bertram expresses no embarrassment about having been taken in by ‘the gallant militarist’ (IV.iii. 137). After Parolles has denigrated the First Lord in the most extreme terms the latter is able to comment, ‘He hath out-villain'd villainy so far that the rarity redeems him’. Bertram, in contrast, who has been relatively unscathed by Parolles' calumnies, can only respond testily: ‘A pox on him! He's a cat still’ (IV.iii. 264-6). While he awaits judgement Parolles determines to give up the futile pretence of military valour: ‘I'll no more drumming. A plague of all drums! Only to seem to deserve well, and to beguile the supposition of that lascivious young boy, the count, have I run into this danger’ (IV.iii. 288-91). Even under the duress of imagined capture and interrogation Parolles has been unable to stop his tongue running away with him, but the experience has been enough to persuade him to discard any further military pretentions. He is set on the path to reform as far as his nature will allow. Once the humiliation is complete, far from creeping away in shame Parolles looks reality in the face, accepts himself as he is, and the new role which he must seek:

Yet am I thankful. If my heart were great
'Twould burst at this. 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.
.....Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and Parolles live
Safest in shame; being fool'd, by fool'ry thrive.
There's place and means for every man alive.
I'll after them.

(IV.iii. 319-29)

In this engaging soliloquy Parolles, stripped bare, seems to breathe a sigh of relief that his acting days are over. Henceforth he can be himself, a copper coin passing as small change rather than current gold. But before he can secure his new position he serves another function. Lafew blames him for having mislead Bertram, describing him as ‘a snipp'd-taffeta fellow … whose villainous saffron would have made all the unbak'd and doughy youth of a nation in his colour’ (IV.v. 1-4). Typically Parolles is described by reference to his extravagant clothing and the link is forged between the clothing and food by means of saffron which was used to colour both. But despite Parolles' bad influence on Bertram the audience can't take Lafew's rationalisation at face value. As Lafew goes on to inform the Countess that the King has agreed to a marriage between his daughter and Bertram, the scene has all the flavour of an exercise designed to restore social harmony and reintegrate Bertram into the community. Helena is remembered and described movingly by the Countess—‘If she had partaken of my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother I could not have owed her a more rooted love’ (IV.v. 10-12)—mingling imagery of growth, consanguinity and value. But the pursuit of the growth imagery by Lafew soon spills over into joking with Lavatch—the kind of response characteristic of funerals where an attempt is made to return to the moving current of life while recognising the numbing impact of loss through death. Thus Shakespeare provides a scene in which the loss of Helena is recognised but the way is prepared for Bertram to re-establish himself. No one really believes that his misdemeanours are all attributable to the influence of Parolles, but it provides an adequate social cover.

As Helena is laid to rest there is a characteristic glance at the past when the Countess says of Lavatch, ‘My lord that's gone made himself much sport out of him; by his authority he remains here’ (IV.v. 61-2). That brief comment contains a number of resonances: the disparity between father and son is called to mind: Lavatch has really outlived his credit—the Countess makes an effort to engage Lavatch so that he may feel that he still has a part to play in the household. Lafew possesses the sympathy of the older generation and affords Lavatch the opportunity of exhibiting his wit. Helena is the only character who appears to have a totally congenial relationship with Lavatch: they are comfortable with each other, and in her company his humour is less contrived. For instance, Helena enjoys his effortless deflation of Parolles (II.iv. 17-35). In contrast Bertram and Lavatch have nothing to say to one another. The favourite of the father has no rapport with the son. When Lavatch announces the arrival of Bertram he does so in a way that suggests the patch on his face may be intended to cover a blemish which is the consequence of venereal disease rather than a battle scar. Although this could be an example of weak humour it also has a touch of malice which Lavatch displays on at least one other occasion. These little touches suggest that Lavatch is no admirer of Bertram's.

Thus the whole scene, which prepares for the arrival of Bertram and the tangled conclusion, is characteristic of the quiet scenes of this play: it is full of suggestion and atmosphere, and it is arguable that no other play of Shakespeare's so effectively conveys a sense of atmosphere: of place and time and mood. Here is Shakespeare at his most delicate and subtle, adopting a style which is uniquely fitted to this play.

As we encounter Helena, the widow and Diana there is both a quickening of pace and a sense of weariness: time and effort pervade a scene which commences with a speech by Helena that embodies these features and employs the growth imagery in a way which is both simple and utterly genuine:

But this exceeding posting day and night
Must wear your spirits low. We cannot help it;
But since you have made the days and nights as one
To wear your gentle limbs in my affairs,
Be bold you do so grow in my requital
As nothing can unroot you.

(V.i. 1-6)

As everyone moves towards Rossillion for the final drawing together there is strong emphasis placed on valuation and reevaluation. Parolles confesses his poor worth to Lafew and receives in exchange a jovial assessment of his character and a promise of security: ‘though you are a fool and a knave you shall eat’ (V.ii. 50). Likewise the King sums up Helena's worth and Bertram's actions:

We lost a jewel of her, and our esteem
Was made much poorer by it; but your son,
As mad in folly, lack'd the sense to know
Her estimation home.

(V.iii. 1-4)

The effect of the discussion which ensues between the King, Lafew and the Countess is to pose another possible conclusion to the play. There is bitterness in the King's reflection on Bertram's past action but a recognition of the necessity of restoring social harmony. The mother forgives her son, the King his subject and Lafew is instrumental in creating a new family alliance. The past casts a shadow, but the nature of life is such that social cohesion has to be continually re-created. Bertram appears to have inherited none of his parents' virtues but he has inherited a position and so must be brought inside once more. Even so, while recognising the social reality the King conveys the impression of forcing himself to forgive Bertram, always referring to the penitent as ‘him’ rather than as the ‘count’ as he does when welcoming Bertram so warmly and generously in I.ii. where he equates him with his son. The King's inability to be wholehearted in his forgiveness is made clear in his first speech to Bertram:

I am not a day of season,
For thou may'st see a sunshine and a hail
In me at once. But to the brightest beams
Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth;
The time is fair again.

(V.iii. 32-6)

This speech also takes up the theme of time which is developed strongly by the King in response to Bertram's apology:

                                        All is whole
Not one word more of the consumed time;
Let's take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees
Th'inaudible and noiseless foot of time
Steals ere we can effect them.

(V.iii. 37-42)

Here is an example of the kind of outward movement into a generalisation about time that occurs so powerfully in Troilus and Cressida. But a great deal of the poignancy resides in the King's awareness that his life is drawing to a close. His line ‘All is whole’ is particularly significant in the context of the problem plays: here is the characteristic desire to see relationships or ideals as standing firm against human frailty or dishonesty. His diction is striking for its simplicity, and there is a stark contrast between his simple question to Bertram ‘You remember / The daughter of this lord?’ (V.iii. 42-3) and the latter's elaborate response:

Admiringly, my liege. At first
I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue;
Where, the impression of mine eye infixing,
Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,
Which warp'd the line of every other favour,
Scorn'd a fair colour or express'd it stol'n,
Extended or contracted all proportions
To a most hideous object. Thence it came
That she whom all men prais'd, and whom myself
Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it.

(V.iii. 44-55)

Nowhere in the play is there the slightest suggestion that Bertram had been attracted to Lafew's daughter. Moreover, he has never evinced an excess of modesty which he claims impeded him from making his feeling known to the young woman. At this moment Bertram has available to him several ways of accepting the young woman with good grace and acknowledging his poor treatment of Helena, but he chooses to practise deception—and does it with style: falsity and dishonesty seem to come naturally to this character. The speech contains the conventionalised features of falling in love and also a glimpse of the body parts so characteristic of Troilus and Cressida: ‘heart’, ‘eye’, ‘tongue’. Artificial and insincere as this speech is, it is accepted by the King with alacrity because it is perceived as an attempt by Bertram to acknowledge and excuse his past guilt while moving forward with enthusiasm to embrace his new position in society. Even so, the King underlines the inadequacy of a sorrow that comes too late in a speech which points strongly in the direction of the romances:

                                                                      but love that comes too late,
Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,
To the great sender turns a sour offence,
Crying, ‘That's good that's gone.’ Our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious things we have,
Not knowing them until we know their grave.

(V.iii. 57-62)

When Bertram hands over his ring to Lafew in a symbolic gesture of joining the two families it is, no doubt, with a good deal of relief as the references to Helena must soon cease. His sense of shock is all the more marked, therefore, when he is challenged successively by Lafew, the King and his mother about how he obtained the ring from Helena. For once Bertram is innocent, but in providing an explanation of how he acquired it Bertram not only lies easily, but also conveys an account which places him in the best possible light:

You are deceiv'd, my lord; she never saw it.
In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,
Wrapp'd in a paper which contain'd the name
Of her that threw it. Noble she was, and thought
I stood ingag'd; but when I had subscrib'd
To mine own fortune, and inform'd her fully
I could not answer in that course of honour
As she had made the overture, she ceas'd
In heavy satisfaction, and would never
Receive the ring again.

(V.iii. 92-101)

Two elements stand out in this part of the scene: first Bertram's plausibility: he lies with such facility and spontaneity; second, how quickly the King thinks the worst of him, even suspecting Bertram of murder. The King's newly rekindled suspicions are expressed in a way that is characteristic of the play. Though the meaning is not obscure the mode of expression calls attention to itself through its knotted quality:

My fore-past proofs, howe'er the matter fall,
Shall tax my fears of little vanity,
Having vainly fear'd too little.

(V.iii. 121-3)

After receiving Diana's letter the King is ready to express to the Countess his conviction that Helena has been the victim of foul play. But rather than reject any suggestion that Bertram could be involved in such an act her response is, ‘Now justice on the doers!’ (V.iii. 153) Nobody, it seems, has any confidence in Bertram; they are willing to believe him worse than he is. Are they merely responding naturally to the strange ‘facts’ or are they giving expression to their true estimation of this young man? Lafew quickly withdraws the offer of his daughter and Bertram is under fire from all sides as Diana makes her accusation. At this point there must surely be a good deal of audience sympathy for Bertram, but Shakespeare quenches it with astonishing speed. First, Bertram defends himself with brazen arrogance:

                                                                      Let your highness
Lay a more noble thought upon mine honour
Than for to think that I would sink it here.

(V.iii. 178-80)

Then in response to Diana's direct accusation Bertram behaves in the most despicable way possible, adopting an approach that has been the age-old standard response of scoundrels who have seduced or raped young women over the centuries:

                                                                      She's impudent, my lord,
And was a common gamester to the camp.

(V.iii. 186-7)

Is it possible that someone able to adopt this stratagem is really capable of being transformed into a ‘good’ man or a romantic hero? Here is the gentleman of noble birth, who cannot bring himself to contaminate his blood by marriage to a physician's daughter, resorting to the most ignoble behaviour in order to preserve his reputation as a gentleman. Could any audience fail to be disgusted by Bertram's behaviour? And could they, within minutes, accept his reformation and pledge of future love? If that is the intention of the dramatist he has certainly pushed Bertram's infamous behaviour to the absolute limit.

When Diana produces Bertram's ring, the Countess makes it very clear how greatly it has been valued as a symbol of family loyalty:

Of six preceding ancestors, that gem
Conferr'd by testament to th'sequent issue,
Hath it been owed and worn.

(V.iii. 195-7)

This is not a romantic comedy formula but a declaration of Bertram's disregard of family connection. The man who insists on his inherited status is prepared to relinquish an important symbol in order to secure sexual gratification—and with a woman for whom he feels contempt.

As Parolles is called for as a witness the parallel between his trial and Bertram's becomes evident. But whereas the former provoked laughter and pity, the latter produces distaste and contempt. It is all the more ironic, therefore, that Bertram is genuinely outraged at the thought of Parolles being called as witness. His language reveals that he has no conception of his own dishonesty and contemptible behaviour:

He's quoted for a most perfidious slave
With all the spots a'th'world tax'd and debosh'd,
Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth.

(V.iii. 204-6)

This is arrogance and moral blindness on a grand scale. But Bertram has not finished degrading himself in an attempt to slip out of what he appears to conceive of as a little local difficulty: he denigrates Diana still further:

                                                                      Certain it is I lik'd her
And boarded her i'th'wanton way of youth.
She knew her distance and did angle for me,
Madding my eagerness with her restraint,
.....                                                                                          and in fine
Her inf'nite cunning with her modern grace
Subdu'd me to her rate; she got the ring,
And I had that which any inferior might
At market-price have bought.

(V.iii. 209-18)

Once more the question of value becomes part of the structure of the speech. As a consequence of her infinite cunning, Bertram protests, he was persuaded to accept her ‘rate’ and thereby obtained what any ‘inferior’ might have secured at mere ‘market-price’. Deeply embedded in the structure of the problem plays is an awareness of value in its various manifestations. One of the ironies of this speech, apart from Bertram's total disregard for the truth, is the assumed superiority of the speaker at the very moment when his estimation in the eyes of virtually everyone else has reached the lowest level. For Bertram, his social status insulates him against ignominy. He does not believe that actions make the man. Parolles makes the point succinctly in response to the King's question about whether Bertram loved Diana: ‘He did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a woman … He lov'd her, sir, and lov'd her not’ (V.iii. 243-5). That is to say, he said he loved her, made love to her, but did not love her. That is precisely the category of ‘gentleman’ to which Bertram belongs. Yet, when Helena emerges to resolve the seemingly irresolvable confusion Bertram is unhesitating in his response. In reply to Helena's

'Tis but the shadow of a wife you see;
The name and not the thing.

Bertram's uncharacteristically simple protestation is:

Both, both. O pardon!

(V.iii. 301-2)

When she claims that she has fulfilled the requirement of his letter Bertram becomes the model lover:

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

(V.iii. 309-10)

Or has Bertram seen a means of saving himself and responded with his usual adroitness?

W. W. Lawrence comments, ‘Critical explanations have nowhere shown wider divergence than in regard to this play, nor have the points at issue ever been more sharply marked.’¹ But for his own part Lawrence feels totally comfortable about Bertram's redemption: he suggests ‘Bertram's sudden change of heart was a convention of medieval and Elizabethan story, which must be expected to follow Helena's triumph’ and adds, ‘there is no implication that their after life would be anything but happy’.² Lawrence rests his case on the force of the convention and the constraint which it imposed on Shakespeare; he ‘was not free, as is a dramatist or novelist of today, to make such sweeping changes in the meaning of traditional stories, in situations made familiar to people by centuries of oral narrative’.³ Although Lawrence provides a ‘solution’ to the problem that troubles so many critics and theatregoers he still sees the play as a failure:

the imagination of the dramatist has seldom been kindled, or his sensibilities aroused. A curious hardness and indifference are often evident. There are flashes of tenderness and fineness, as in the portraiture of Helena and the Countess, but these are all too rare … He relied for effect, not on emotion or truth to life, but on the familiarity and popularity of the story, and upon the theatrical effectiveness of individual scenes. And this, I think, is why the modern reader, who has no feeling for the traditions of story, and who cannot judge from the stage effects, finds All's Well highly puzzling.⁴

The last comment indicates that the difficulties of the play are associated specifically with the play on the page rather than the play on the stage. Nevertheless, Lawrence implies that All's Well is not a very good play, and to be enjoyed it must be observed from the standpoint of an Elizabethan without any thought being given to verisimilitude. Neither of these arguments stand up to close examination: why did Shakespeare go to so much trouble to complicate the traditional story by making Bertram so unattractive? As G. K. Hunter argues, ‘If personal reconciliation is really the end of this scene, we can only say that Shakespeare has been extraordinarily clumsy.’⁵ Secondly, despite the problem of interpreting the conclusion, this play is now recognised as a great theatrical success. Neither is it a second class piece of work nor enjoyable simply in the naïve way of Lawrence's assumed Elizabethan playgoer. The enormously successful RSC production of 1981, for example, attests to the fineness of the play and its popular appeal. That production preserved the ambiguity by having Bertram and Helena walk off the stage side-by-side but with their hands not quite touching. The chilling thought remained that Bertram had used another ploy to save himself and that Helena, for all her personal qualities, was destined to endure a thoroughly miserable marriage. Yet the possibility of genuine happiness occurring after initial embarrassment and uncertainty was retained.

Philip Edwards, however, is unequivocal in his final evaluation of the reconciliation and the inadequacy of the play:

The treatment of Parolles shows us a scoundrel changed by shame into a new recognition of himself and a new way of life. Bertram is not so treated. Helena never saves Bertram. He is unredeemable: Shakespeare could not save him. It is not a matter of failing to write the lines that would have changed the soul of the play: it is a matter of not being able to force one's conscience to alter a character whose alteration would be, simply, incredible. Angelo's alteration in Measure for Measure is an entirely different matter: he has all the resources for change, the depth of being, that the shallow Bertram never has. In All's Well, the unconvincing words, asking pardon and promising love, are all that can be wrested from the figure Shakespeare has created. Anything further would be falseness and he surely knew it. He has driven the play to a fold it cannot enter, and he refuses to make it enter. That is the failure. But why the obstinacy of the character of Bertram? Has Shakespeare ‘accidently’ created the wrong figure for his story? The obstinacy is in humanity as Shakespeare saw it before it is in his dramatic fiction. Given a providence, given a whole world of family honour to guide him, given the angel-like wife to safeguard him from the consequences of his actions, the imbued irresponsibility, selfishness and shallowness of a Bertram remain intact.⁶

Shakespeare originally intended to create harmony and reconciliation but his own integrity stood in his way, Professor Edwards insists:

Shakespeare's honesty has then, in a way, wrecked the play: the final harmony is in fact discordant. The need he felt to tune that discord is seen in the composition of Measure for Measure. Yet to have wrecked the play as a comedy is still to have produced a work which speaks out even more truth than the completed circle could have shown. There is a consolation somewhere in the failure to bring off the consolation for the audience. Shakespeare has met the challenge he gave to his own earlier comedies, and wrought a form of comedy which would be more inclusive of the facts of evil. He refuses, at the last minute as it were, to believe that he can contain the facts within the form: if the play disappoints, we are surely deeply impressed by the sense of struggle and by the honesty of the craftsman who tries to bring the deep hopes of the soul into the images of art, and finds them countered by the even deeper doubts.⁷

This is a fascinating conclusion. Edwards refuses to resort to evasion; he recognises the power of this play yet ultimately he detects incongruity, the source of which is the disparity between Shakespeare's original intention and his achievement. However, Edwards claims that Shakespeare learned from this experience, so that Measure for Measure does not fail in the same way. In contrast to Bertram's reformation Professor Edwards claims, ‘The penitence of Angelo and the reception of the new man into the society of the play is convincing and moving.’⁸ Yet many theatregoers and critics find Angelo's penitence and reform just as difficult to believe in as Bertram's. So perhaps Shakespeare failed twice in the same way. The alternative explanation is that Shakespeare achieved precisely what he intended in both cases: the subversion or disruption of the romantic comedy ending. But why should he do this? What was he trying to achieve? Dowden felt that Shakespeare must have been experiencing some kind of mental breakdown during the period when he was writing these plays. This dubious conclusion at least has the merit of recognising that there is something peculiar about the problem plays. What Shakespeare did was to invent a new form, and that is one reason why the ambiguous terms dark comedies and tragicomedies are not useful as descriptive labels for these plays. They provide a familiar structure which embrace elements antithetical to that structure. It is as if Shakespeare sought to insinuate a questioning about certain aspects of life by creating a questioning of the form in which that life is embodied. The kinds of epithets associated with the problem plays are ‘analytical’, ‘perplexing’, ‘puzzling’. In this sense Shakespeare achieved his objective. The Trojan war and the love story of Troilus and Cressida presented him with a unique opportunity for creating a play which evaded all existing classifications while enabling him to disturb his audience with profound questions about human values and the operation of human society. But that play did not exhaust the range of questions Shakespeare wanted to raise. His next step, in All's Well, was to adopt the structure of comedy but employing two endings: the ending of fairy tale which satisfies one kind of human desire, and an ending which points in an entirely different direction. Hence the blending of fairy tale with an intense sense of realism. In real life Helena could be mistaken about Bertram. But rather than present an outright denial of romantic comedy Shakespeare does something much more disconcerting: the audience is left pondering the possible scenarios beyond the end of the play. As they pursue these possible ends they spontaneously revert to consideration of the action which precedes the resolution of the drama. Not even Shakespeare's tragedies produce the intense analytical reflection that these plays provoke, nor do the problem plays allow the consolation of tragedy. Despite the destruction, cruelty and pain encountered in the tragedies, consolation is gained through an awareness of our common humanity. We cut through the fibrous strata to the very centre of human being. The problem plays deal with a broader and in one sense more superficial range of human thoughts and actions. In real life there is little heroism or grandeur: men struggle to establish values and institutions. These continually come under pressure from the chaotic stream of human action which contains a great deal of weakness, folly, greed, envy, self-deception, egotism, and pettiness. A large part of the social world depicted and suggested by Shakespeare in the problem plays bears close kinship with Brueghel's paintings. While some men and women seek to purify life, to establish firm principles and values, others use existing values and institutions as props to be used for their own ends or as barriers to be negotiated. Bertram accepts the concepts of social hierarchy and nobility of birth while simultaneously rejecting their concomitant of obligation. He accepts fighting as a means of asserting personal worth and acquiring honour because it is congenial to him, but rejects the principle of honourable behaviour towards women. Self-gratification is his guiding principle, and it remains open whether Bertram will continue happily on his way, simply using the protection of a good wife as a cover. What sort of master will Bertram make? The question would have occurred more readily to some members of Shakespeare's audience than to a contemporary one. After three hours of observing the nasty little egotist, could anyone really feel that here is a man who will retain the tolerant and good-humoured regime established by his father and continued by his mother? Whereas in Shakespeare's plays it is generally misleading to stray beyond the confines of the play world, in the problem plays there is positive invitation to explore the adjacent territory. Shakespeare seems to be saying ‘if this was the world of romantic comedy, this is how the play would end; but consider these events in the light of human experience and contemplate the probable outcomes’. This open-endedness makes its appearance in the contemporary novel. John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, for example, provides three clear options. Shakespeare provides an indeterminate and amorphous range of possibilities. Moreover, the consideration of likely scenarios arising from the conclusion of All's Well provokes a more intense re-examination of the preceding events than occurs in Fowles's novel. Fowles is adopting a traditional narrative form imitative of writers like Hardy and attempting to subvert it. He pursues his objective not by parodying the traditional narrative technique but by utilising it with great tact and sensitivity. At one level the book is a very fine nineteenth-century novel. But it is also a contemporary novel inviting a reappraisal both of the novel form and of the nature of social values and personal responses. Fowles and other contemporary novelists like him are doing very much what Shakespeare is doing with fable and folk tale in All's Well.

An important aspect of this question has been perceived by Nicholas Brooke who, in his insightful commentary on the play, focuses on the finely balanced and precisely articulated relationship between realism and folk tale. Shakespeare, argues Brooke, takes the established convention of the folk tale but locates it firmly within a realistic setting. In consequence the language moves between rhyming couplets applicable to fairy tale and terse, precise, prosaic expression which conveys a strongly naturalistic feeling. Brooke suggests that ‘What All's Well does, is to take that familiar [folk tale] material and look at it in a very unfamiliar way.’⁹ He goes on to draw an illuminating comparison between what Shakespeare is doing in this play and what Caravaggio does in his picture of Mary Magdalene.

What Caravaggio has done is to take the familiar iconography and view it with a wholly unfamiliar naturalism, which projects an entirely new image. His Mary is neither crude whore nor glorious saint, but a quiet and plausible girl, very much alone. Once that is seen the painting becomes extraordinarily interesting; and its interest is generated, not by the naturalism alone, but by the juxtaposition of that with the traditional mythology. That is almost exactly the achievement I am attributing to Shakespeare in All's Well: not a simple naturalism, but a consistently naturalistic presentation of traditional romance magic.¹⁰

Brooke's comments go a long way towards creating an understanding of the connections between the romantic and naturalistic elements in the play and to the way in which Shakespeare has adopted a specific patterning and structuring of the language in order to keep these elements in balance. As Brooke himself expresses the point:

I have already claimed for this play a distinctive and very distinguished language … so far from being a play that falls apart, it has a controlled unity of a kind rare even in Shakespeare. Its unity is conditioned by its tone; by the refusal ever to let it move beyond the limits which that defines.¹¹

In contrast G. K. Hunter maintains that ‘There is a general failure in All's Well to establish a medium in verse which will convey effectively the whole tone of the play.’¹² This view has rightly been criticised by Brooke who points out that ‘the play's characteristic medium is precisely this uniquely bare language which excludes decoration and so makes all imagery, or any romantic valuation of experience, evidently superfluous’.¹³ Brooke carries the argument further by stressing that the function of the naturalism of the language is that ‘It continually delivers the shock of actuality into the context of anticipated fiction’, and he adds, ‘But the naturalism of the speech is not merely bluntness. It has the quality too of the reticence of natural speech.’¹⁴ Thus the quality of incongruity which is so detectable is a very deliberate feature of this play operating at every level and being powerfully mediated through the language.

So far, no attempt has been made to analyse Helena. Her goodness is verified through the comments of the Countess, Lafew and the King. But because her virtue is to be taken for granted, rather than to be subjected to close psychological scrutiny, her relationship with Bertram forms a crucial part of the incongruity which informs the play, the connection between fairy tale and reality. As Rossiter comments:

Helena is (mainly) a fairy-tale, ‘traditional’ story-book female, who is ‘good’; and we should no more inquire into the details than into those of her honeymoon … The problematic element remains, because this sentimental fairy-tale ‘Good One’ is conjoined with a realistic, real-life ‘Bad 'Un’; and the two particles in this mysterious, alleged unity exist in not merely different orbits, but orbits in different systems. This produces a state of mixed feelings, in which the fairy-tale solution we might like to believe in (and are adjured to by the title, and by the ‘historical method’ interpreters) is in conflict with the realistic, psychological exposure—which is very much more convincing.¹⁵

And so we come full circle. The rock on which all criticism ultimately alights (or founders) is the consummation. Rossiter, like Edwards, expresses the view that the incongruity is the consequence of Shakespeare failing to complete the intended design. As he puts it,

In All's Well there are ‘disparities of experience’ (thought and feeling) which fail to reach ‘amalgamation’. The play came from an unresolved creative mind, in which sentimentality tried to balance the scepticism, and deliberately not seeing far enough (the fairy-tale element), tried to write off the results of seeing too far through (the ‘realist’ or tragic-comic inquiry into mankind).¹⁶

It is worth citing the response of one or two other critics in order to convey just how pervasive is the anxiety and dissatisfaction with the conclusion of this play. Roger Warren, for example, sums up the feelings of many critics and theatregoers when he suggests that ‘The most extraordinary feature of All's Well, surely, is the curiously unsympathetic portrait of its hero.’¹⁷ But he quite rightly sees this as deliberate on Shakespeare's part:

By the standards of ordinary romantic heroes, Bertram is a ‘failure’, but as a consistent character he is brilliantly successful, so much so that I think we must assume that Shakespeare meant him that way, and that the worrying effect is intentional.¹⁸

It is the very realism of the characterisation of Bertram that explains the intensity of the antagoism which he has aroused. Tillyard, for example, comments that ‘The irony and the truth of Helena's situation are that with so much intelligence and so firm a mind she can be possessed by so enslaving a passion for an unreformed, rather stupid, morally timid, and very self-centred youth.’¹⁹

Here then is the enigma: it is difficult to see Bertram as a man worthy of Helena's love or capable of becoming worthy of her love. Roger Warren explores the Sonnets in order to suggest the source of Shakespeare's feeling towards the story. He concludes his discussion by commenting

I think that he made Helena so intense, and presented her beloved with such relentless honesty, because he had something especially personal to say about the power of love to prevail over all ‘alteration’ and humiliation, even if it proved less easy to show matters ending well in dramatic than in non-dramatic terms.²⁰

Despite the intelligent and insightful nature of the argument we once more see the critic driven back from offering an explanation from within the drama. The implication is that whatever Shakespeare was aiming at he did not quite succeed.

One of the few critics who feels satisfied with the romantic interpretation of the play is Robert Smallwood. In his perceptive study he suggests that the play ‘concludes in gaity and in hope for the future, though not in the triumphant joy of more unequivocally romantic comedy’.²¹ Thus even a critic who finds the behaviour of Bertram forgivable, and has a strong sense of his positive qualities, feels obliged to register a note of caution. Although Smallwood believes that ‘The affection which Bertram is capable of inspiring in those around him is remarkable’²² and that ‘his heart, ultimately, is “great”, or at least has the potential for greatness’,²³ he insists that ‘the play ends, and is meant to end, not in fully achieved happiness, but in hope’.²⁴ It is difficult to find a critic who argues his case more cogently, but even after reading this persuasive essay it is impossible to be convinced for long of Bertram's potential greatness or humanity.

Clearly the majority of critics of this play feel a sense of unease with the resolution. Rossiter and Edwards come out boldly in claiming that Shakespeare failed to fulfil his original intentions though they see the play as flawed rather than as a failure. Few perceive the ambiguity as intended and fewer still are satisfied with it. The argument advanced here is that Shakespeare was in complete control of his material and the ambiguity was fully intended. Following his artistic, though not necessarily popular, success of Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare deliberately used the structure of romantic comedy to create an intense awareness of the moral and social values raised and to provoke an examination of the dramatic mode in which they are expressed. When Boas coined the term ‘problem plays’ he was being more insightful than he realised. These plays are profoundly concerned with problems of values and human attachments, and these are matters which concern not only the great and powerful, but all mankind.

Notes

1. W. W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, 3rd edn (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 43.

2. Ibid., p. 48.

3. Ibid., p. 73.

4. Ibid., pp. 78-9.

5. G. K. Hunter (ed.), Introduction to the New Arden Edition of ‘All's Well’ (Methuen, London, 1967), p. 1iv.

6. Philip Edwards, Shakespeare and the Confines of Art, 2nd edn (Methuen, London, 1972), pp. 114-15.

7. Ibid., p. 115.

8. Ibid., p. 115.

9. Nicholas Brooke, ‘All's Well that Ends Well’ in Muir and Wells (eds), Aspects of Shakespeare's ‘Problem Plays’ (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982), p. 16.

10. Ibid., p. 17.

11. Ibid., p. 20.

12. Hunter (ed.), New Arden Shakespeare, p. 1ix.

13. Brooke, ‘All's Well’ in Muir and Wells (eds), Aspects of ‘Problem Plays,’ p. 12.

14. Ibid., p. 13.

15. A. P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns, 4th edn (Longman, London, 1970), p. 100.

16. Ibid., p. 105.

17. Roger Warren, ‘Why Does It End Well? Helena, Bertram and the Sonnets’ in Muir and Wells (eds), Aspects of ‘Problem Plays’, p. 48.

18. Ibid., p. 44.

19. E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays, 3rd edn (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 112.

20. Warren, ‘Why Does It End Well?’ in Muir and Wells (eds), Aspects of ‘Problem Plays’, p. 56.

21. R. L. Smallwood, ‘The Design of All's Well that Ends Well’ in Muir and Wells (eds), Aspects of ‘Problem Plays’, p. 41.

22. Ibid., p. 38.

23. Ibid., p. 41.

24. Ibid., p. 42.