My Shakespeare Binge - #1. All's Well That Ends Well
Shakespeare Binge-Play Review
Introduction to the Binge
I decided to read and watch all of Shakespeare’s plays in a binge. There is no time limit for the binge, in contrast to what we typically do for streaming and TV series, namely watch them in a couple of weeks. Each post will have one play, an analysis of the text, a synopsis of the play, trivia from the play, a viewing of the play and its impressions on me. In order not to follow a certain pattern, I will do this alphabetically, so each posting might cover a play from a different era of Shakespeare’s writing.
I am using The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare and Commentaries for the text. I’m also using playshakespeare.com for extensive material on Shakespeare and his plays. As for the videos, they will vary, so I will not be able to watch them all from an acclaimed theatre group.
Introduction to the Play-All’s Well That Ends Well
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My first post of the series is about All’s Well That Ends Well. Sometimes described as an early tragicomedy, this play is possibly not one of the best-known plays of the Bard but has a steady following in literary and theatre circles.
It was written in the period 1602-1603 and is part of the First Folio1 collection published in 1623.
It is based on a story from Boccacio’s The Decameron (Day 3, Novell 9). Apart from the name of the main heroine being Juliet in the original story, the play more or less follows the plot.
Synopsis
The play consists of five acts.
Bertram, the Count of Roussillon, joins the court of the King of France after he has lost his father. The King is ailing from a fistula and no one has been able to find a cure yet. The Countess of Roussillon is sad that she has also lost her son to the King’s Court, so soon after she has lost her husband.
Helena is the daughter of the late Gerard de Narbon, who was the greatest doctor of his time. She is taken care of by the Countess and she has recipes left by his father. She thinks she can cure the King through these recipes. She is also secretly in love with Bertram, which she confesses in a soliloquy towards the end of Act I Scene I.
Bertram’s friend Parolles is a fast-talking soldier who hides his cowardice with witty conversation and shows his language skills in a funny dialogue about virginity with Helena.
Helena travels to Paris to see if she can persuade the King’s physicians to try the medicine she will offer. She persuades the King and succeeds in curing him. The King holds his promise to allow her to marry anyone she wishes and Helena declares that she wants Bertram as her husband. However, Bertram is not happy with this decision, since he finds Helena as being socially inferior to him and as such unsuitable as a wife.
The King is furious and forces Bertram to marry her. Bertram sends Helena to his house and joins the French Army to go to battle against the Florentines. He sends a letter to Helena, declaring that he will only bed her if she can get his ring off his finger and prove that she is pregnant with his child.
Helena goes to Florence in disguise, plots an elaborate plan and manages to bed Bertram, taking somebody else’s place and managing to get his ring off him. The rest is typical, with Helena revealing what she did and Bertram eventually professing his love for her.
Structure and Style
Shakespeare typically used iambic pentameter (a form of verse with ten syllables for each line and typically using rhyme) for lower-status characters or comedy. In contrast, he used the blank verse (a form of iambic pentameter where there is no rhyme) for higher-status characters or serious topics. He used a mixture of these in some of his more serious works where actors switch to prose for jokes or comedic content. He preferred blank verse since it was easier for actors to memorise the lines written in this form.
We see very little verse in this play, but it is usually consistent with the pattern described above.
Play Trivia
French war against Florence
When the King of Naples Ferdinand I died (1494) and was succeeded by his son, King of France Charles VIII disputed that succession and moved against Naples. The French collaborated with Milan and started progressing in Italy. The Florentine folk revolted against the Medici family and started resisting the French. The French invaded Florence, moved against Rome and in a year’s time invaded Naples. Then the Italian states joined with papal forces and ousted the French from Italy. Events in Shakespeare’s play are happening during the Franco-Florentine conflict.
Fistula
The King of France suffers from a fistula in the play. He is cured by Helena, who uses her late father’s receipt against the illness. Fistulas were frequently fatal in the Middle Ages since the only known remedy was surgery, which could easily turn fatal.
Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday
The Clown uses this expression in the play to describe why his answer would fit all questions and one of the examples he gives is a pancake for Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when people would go for confession before Lent starts. They would fast 40 days from that day on, thus pancakes would be a good last indulgence on the Tuesday before fasting starts.
Excerpt
PAROLLES
Little Helen, farewell. If I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.
HELENA
Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.
PAROLLES
Under Mars, I.
HELENA
I especially think, under Mars.
PAROLLES
Why under Mars?
HELENA
The wars hath so kept you under that you must needs be born under Mars.
PAROLLES
When he was predominant.
HELENA
When he was retrograde, I think rather.
PAROLLES
Why think you so?
HELENA
You go so much backward when you fight.
PAROLLES
That’s for advantage.
HELENA
So is running away, when fear proposes the safety. But the composition that your valor and fear makes in you is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the wear well.
Excerpt from First Folio
I include a short excerpt from the First Folio version of the play (from the dialogue between Parolles and Helena about virginity), just to demonstrate the English spoken and used in Theatre at that time.
PAROLLES
Are you meditating on virginitie?
HELENA
I: you haue ſome ſtaine of ſouldier in you: Let
mee aske you a queſtion. Man is enemie to virginitie,
how may we barracado it againſt him?
PAROLLES
Keepe him out.
HELENA
But he aſſailes, and our virginitie though vali-
ant, in the defence yet is weak: vnfold to vs ſome war-
like reſiſtance.
PAROLLES
There is none: Man ſetting downe before you,
will vndermine you, and blow you vp.
Viewing
I watched the play through a subscription to the online service Digital Theatre (digitaltheatre.com), which provides high-quality plays with a subscription of around £100 annually. The play was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in 2022.
The staging was a quasi-modern implementation of the play, with actors donning modern costumes, especially military costumes corresponding to modern British military garb. The recording used a lot of cell phone clips, letting passive actors use their phones to record the events etc. The actors also interacted with the audience at times (like Parolles showing the picture of a withered pear to an audience member where the dialogue was about virginity being similar to a withered pear.
Actors playing Parolles and Lafew used a larger-than-life style, whereas others were quite measured).
As far as I could follow, they only skipped non-essential lines and only a few of those, so the total performance was slightly over two hours in length.
Impressions
It is obvious that this is not one of the most popular plays of Shakespeare, although some of Helena’s monologues are quite popular with Shakespearean actors. There are also comical parts of the dialogue (the play is classified as a comedy), especially the dialogue between Helena and Parolles about virginity and the part where the French try to prove that Parolles is a coward by pretending they are the enemy and speaking a strange, invented language. Helena’s scheme to make sure Bertram gets caught within his set conditions and has to reunite with her sounds childish but is a mechanism used by many films and books.
I don’t think I will have an urge to watch this play again and the text does not render itself to many variations, but there are witty dialogues within the play, so it is worth watching, at least once.
Cast of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre
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Shakespeare’s Folios are collections of his plays that correspond to anthologies at that time. A folio typically had around 750 copies. It is thought that there are around 250 copies of the First Folio and a copy of the First Folio sells for around $10 million nowadays.