Where Helen Gets Her Man

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've never seen this performed, but it seems pretty entertaining, pretty fast-moving. Should be fun to see.

I knew the story from the Decameron, and it's a pretty typical plot for that collection of stories--a husband or wife tricking the other one to get their way is a common motif. It's hard to have any feeling for the main characters, though. I kinda like Helen, who proves her worth by her medical knowledge and ability, but making the king force a guy to marry her is pretty wrong. And then for that guy to abandon his wife is also pretty wrong. I'm not on either one's side.

But letting it be a kind of farce, one clearly based more on literary models than on real life, it is clever and amusing. Bertram has promised never to be a real husband to Helen until she has his ring (which he'll never give her) and presents him with his child (though he'll never sleep with her), so it looks like it's impossible. But Helen finds a way. She manages to substitute herself in for a young woman near Florence that her husband wants to sleep with, after the girl first demands the ring that she needs so badly. Apparently, in a dark room, he'd have no idea who he was really with. It works, she gets pregnant, and she gets the ring from the girl to take back to court in France to win her husband back.

There's more to it than that, because she needs additional proofs, but it all comes out in the final scene. I don't know how they can possibly live happily ever after, but we're given the impression that everyone is reconciled, and I'm just going with it.

I appreciate the theme dealing with true merit. Bertram doesn't see any value in low-born Helen, but she proves herself to be someone who deserves respect because of her wit and achievements. Others, like the coward Parolles, deserve scorn despite being born to a higher class. It's disappointing that this argument ever needed to be made, but I'm glad it makes the case here.

Overall, this play is pretty intelligible and easy to follow, IMO, for a modern audience. Whether we could be made to warm up to the main characters in a production of this or not, I'm not sure. I think probably. Anyway, it's worth reading.

Recommended.

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