All’s Well That Ends Well Act One – “My friends were poor, but honest.”

All’s Well That Ends Well Act One – “My friends were poor, but honest.”

Shakespeare knew that he had to whip up another play to accompany ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and ‘King Lear’ in the new season for The Globe. These two plays had already proved a success in winter venues like the palace and the law colleges but he knew that he had to add a comedy to the mix if he wanted the summer Globe season to be a success.

The Plague looked as if it would not hit too hard that year since only about 500 had died in the lead up months. So with care it looked as if there would be a normal death toll of about 1500 people dead in London for July and August (although reports from Wales were coming in that the Plague was bad there this year). James I and the royals would, of course, leave the city. ‘Measure for Measure’ had played up to King James well and he had paid for a couple of performances but its transfer to The Globe had had a mixed reaction. It was becoming clear to Shakespeare that a different darker sort of comedy was coming into vogue – a comedy of moral disillusionment. Ben Jonson jumped on the bandwagon quickly with his ‘Every Man and His Humour’ and Middleton with his ‘Family of Love’ and ‘The Phoenix’. If it was moral disillusionment they wanted, then Shakespeare could deliver. 

So Shakespeare turned to William Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’ which was a rough translation of Boccaccio’s ‘The Decameron’ to tell a black and cynical tale about human relations, sex and love filled with pleasant and unpleasant characters and even rogues and cads where true love takes second place to manipulation and exploitation.

Shakespeare’s play is set in France, where the death and mortality has cast a long shadow. The action begins at Rousillon in France where the Countess has just lost her husband. Helena, the daughter of a now-deceased but once renowned doctor, is a ward of the Countess. The Countess mourns her husband but has to send her son Count Bertram (a handsome, brave but naive young man) into the service of the King of France. The Countess exits and Bertram leaves for the French court where the King of France is sick. Helena reveals that she is in love with Bertram, but because she is a commoner and he is a nobleman, she has little hope of gaining his love. Helena tries to remember her father as she thinks what life may be like without Bertram in Rousillon:

“… I think not on my father;

And these great tears grace his remembrance more

Than those I shed for him. What was he like?

I have forgot him: 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. 'Twas pretty, though plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our 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 reliques.”

Enter Parolles, a sleazy and unpleasant man who seems to get on well with Bertram. Parolles and Helena discuss chastity and Parolles gives his blunt observations on the subject:

“Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be

blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with

the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It

is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to

preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational

increase and there was never virgin got till

virginity was first lost. That you were made of is

metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost

may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is

ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with 't…

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!”

Parolles eventually suggests that Helena find a husband and lose her virginity quickly and he exits. Helena then decides that she will not give herself into her common fate and she decides on a plan to hopefully marry Bertram. 
“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.
What power is it which mounts my love so high,
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
What hath been cannot be: who ever strove
So 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.”

We move onto Paris and the King’s court where Bertram arrives just as the King of France reveals that he will not get involved in the war between the Florentines and the Senoys (Austria). The King welcomes Bertram, but showing sadness at the loss of Bertram’s father. He then says that he wishes Helena’s father was also still alive since he might have been able to cure his sickness and save his life. The King says that he will treat Bertram like his own son.

Back in Rousillon, the Countess walks and talks with a Clown. A Steward enters and tells the Countess that he overheard Helena declaring her love for Bertram. The Countess sends for Helena immediately. Helena comes and admits that she loves Bertram. She then reveals that she intends to go to the King’s palace in Paris and offer herself as a doctor to the King. Although the Countess, thinks that the King and his royal physicians will not accept the help of a “poor unlearned virgin” she gives Helena leave to go to the court in Paris.