Jennifer, Reading: All's Well That Ends Well?

To be honest, I felt sorry for Bertram. I understand and can empathise with Helen's colossal yearning and love for him, impossible to fulfil. But was it love? She used a stratagem to get the king to force him to marry her or lose his royal favour forever. He was a young man, too young to go to war, so surely, too young to be bound to a woman that was not of his choice?

The Countess, his mother, did not act true to type, either. I think a normal mother would have protected her son and been angry at the presumption of someone so far beneath him, for aspiring to his hand. But she chastises her son for refusing to love Helen or Helena (she is referred to as both in the play).

She strives to force his compliance by telling him that Helena is too good for him. The king and Helena try to force his compliance as well. I get why they say this is a troublesome play.

Bertram goes off to war and in Florence, he harasses a virtuous maiden and tries to get into her bed, promising her marriage if circumstances permit, making himself out to be an object of pity, forced by the king. So, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to wrest the virginity of this maiden, for whom, he has conceived an overwhelming desire, with no intention of fulfilling his promise to her. I don't really care how he treats Helena, as that alliance was forced upon him and nobody needs to be faithful to vows forced upon one, even if by a king.

But, the way he treated Diana (I wonder if Shakespeare chose these names on purpose -- Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships and Diana, the Chaste Goddess of the Hunt) was despicable. In the denouement, he accuses her of being a common whore...after all his protestations of love...

When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can sooth her melancholy,

What art can wash her guilt away?

I guess part of it was a cautionary tale against surrendering your virginity to a married man who hates his wife but I had difficulty finding the moral here. I know I am supposed to like Helena, but I just couldn't. She forced her will upon him. She didn't win him over through love, she simply overpowered him.

And I guess his behaviour with Diana proved that he was no better than he ought to be and it was OK to deceive him. He was young and gullible after all. His closest companion, Parolles, was an unrepentant knave after all.

For a play that is supposed to be about Bertram and Helena, a lot of it seems to have been devoted to Parolles. At first, he bandies words with Helena, arguing against the evil of virginity:

There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the
rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity,
is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible
disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin:
virginity murders itself and should be buried in
highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate
offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites,
much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very
paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of
self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the
canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose
by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make
itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the
principal itself not much the worse: away with 't!

I have to say, this reminded me of (of all things) Angels in America, where the Angel of America refers to God's abandonment:

He began to leave us!

Bored with His Angels, Bewitched by Humanity,

In Mortifying Imitation of You, his least creation,

He would sail off on Voyages, no knowing where.

Quake follows quake,

Absence follows Absence:

Nasty Chastity and Disorganization:

Loss of Libido, Protomatter Shorfall:

But Helena declares at the beginning that although Parolles is a bastard, really, he's not a bad fellow. When he sues for his life and reveals every military secret to what he thinks as the enemies, he is unashamed. He wants to live. That's it. To hell with honour and friendship and all that.

In the end, he's taken in by Lafeu, the French nobleman who first found him out and knew he was not a suitable companion for Bertram. Bertram himself, doesn't seem that put out when he finds out that Parolles is a thrice bastard. He seems to take it in his stride.

Another thing I found funny, as in strange, is that if everyone loved Helena so much, why were they so eager and willing to marry Bertram off the moment they heard she was dead? Lafeu (he proffered his daughter), the Countess, the King...it makes everything so...insincere. It's like, there's no real good person in this play. They're all knaves in one way or another and that's why, Parolles is forgiven, fed, let off, because well, who can cast the first stone here?

Although it doesn't really hang together (perhaps it was never meant to? perhaps a play was merely a collection of pretty, well-written speeches and the preoccupation with "meaning" is modern?) there are plenty of pretty speeches:

The Countess (giving advice to her son, on his leaving to go to court):

Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be cheque'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.

Helena, when she first reveals her love for Bertram:

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