By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,

As she would catch another Antony

In her strong toil of grace.

DOLABELLA

Here on her breast

There is a vent of blood, and something blown.

The like is on her arm.

FIRST GUARD

This is an aspic’s trail,

And these fig-leaves have slime upon them such

As th’aspic leaves upon the caves of Nile.

CAESAR Most probable

That so she died; for her physician tells me

She hath pursued conclusions infinite

Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,

And bear her women from the monument.

She shall be buried by her Antony.

No grave upon the earth shall clip in it

A pair so famous. High events as these

Strike those that make them, and their story is

No less in pity than his glory which

Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall

In solemn show attend this funeral,

And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see

High order in this great solemnity.

Exeunt all, soldiers bearing Cleopatra ⌈on her bed⌉, Charmian, and Iras

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

All’s Well That Ends Well, first printed in the 1623 Folio, is often paired with Measure for Measure. Though we lack external evidence as to its date of composition, internal evidence suggests that it, too, is an early Jacobean play. Like Measure for Measure, it places its central characters in more painful situations than those in which the heroes and heroines of the earlier, more romantic comedies usually find themselves. The touching ardour with which Helen, ‘a poor physician’s daughter’, pursues the young Bertram, son of her guardian the Countess of Roussillon, creates embarrassments for both of them. When the King, whose illness she cures by her semi-magical skills, brings about their marriage as a reward, Bertram’s flight to the wars seems to destroy all her chances of happiness. She achieves consummation of the marriage only by the ruse (resembling Isabella’s ’bed-trick’ in Measure for Measure) of substituting herself for the Florentine maiden Diana whom Bertram believes himself to be seducing. The play’s conclusion, in which the deception is exposed and Bertram is shamed into acknowledging Helen as his wife, offers only a tentatively happy ending.

Shakespeare based the story of Bertram and Helen on a tale from Boccaccio’s Decameron either in the original or in the version included in William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566-7, revised 1575). But he created several important characters, including the Countess and the old Lord, Lafeu. He also invented the accompanying action exposing the roguery of Bertram’s flashy friend Paroles, a man of words (as his name indicates) descending from the braggart soldier of Roman comedy.

Versions of the play performed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly emphasizing either the comedy of Paroles or the sentimental appeal of Helen, had little success; but fine productions from the middle of the twentieth century onwards have shown it in a more favourable light, demonstrating, for example, that the role of the Countess is (in Bernard Shaw’s words) ‘the most beautiful old woman’s part ever written’, that the discomfiture of Paroles provides comedy that is subtle as well as highly laughable, and that the relationship of Bertram and Helen is profoundly convincing in its emotional reality.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

The Dowager COUNTESS of Roussillon

BERTRAM, Count of Roussillon, her son

HELEN, an orphan, attending on the Countess

LAVATCH, a Clown, the Countess’s servant

REYNALDO, the Countess’s steward

PAROLES, Bertram’s companion

The KING of France

LAFEU, an old lord

INTERPRETER, a French soldier

An AUSTRINGER

The DUKE of Florence

WIDOW Capilet

DIANA, her daughter

MARIANA, a friend of the Widow

Lords, attendants, soldiers, citizens

All’s Well That Ends Well

1.1 Enter young Bertram Count of Roussillon, his mother the Countess, Helen, and Lord Lafeu, all in black

COUNTESS In delivering my son from me I bury a second husband.

BERTRAM And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s death anew; but I must attend his majesty’s command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.

LAFEU You shall find of the King a husband, madam; you, sir, a father. 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.

COUNTESS What hope is there of his majesty’s amendment?

LAFEU He hath abandoned his physicians, madam, under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.

COUNTESS This young gentlewoman had a father—O that ‘had’: how sad a passage ’tis!—whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would for the King’s sake he were living. I think it would be the death of the King’s disease.

LAFEU How called you the man you speak of, madam? COUNTESS He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbonne.

LAFEU He was excellent indeed, madam. The King very lately spoke of him, admiringly and mourningly. He was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

BERTRAM What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?

LAFEU A fistula, my lord.

BERTRAM I heard not of it before.

LAFEU I would it were not notorious.—Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gérard de Narbonne?

COUNTESS His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer—for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity: they are virtues and traitors too. In her they are the better for their simpleness. She derives her honesty and achieves her goodness.

LAFEU Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

COUNTESS ’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek.—No more of this, Helen. Go to, no more, lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have—

HELEN I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.

LAFEU Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.