KeyDates
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Date Written: 1603-1604. 
First Printing: 1623 as part of the First Folio, the first authorized collection of Shakespeare's plays.

Source

.......Shakespeare based All's Well That Ends Well on a story in The Decameron, by Boccaccio (1313-1375). The Decameron, written between 1349 and 1353, consists of one hundred tales told by seven men and three women to pass the time after they isolate themselves in a villa to escape the plague. The subjects of the tales include romance, deceit, and the power of the human will. 

Significance of the Title
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.......The title is based on lines spoken by Helena to point out that the success or failure of an event or a course of action depends entirely on how it ends: 

..............But with the word the time will bring on summer,
..............When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns,
..............And be as sweet as sharp. We must away;
..............Our wagon is prepared, and time revives us:
..............All's well that ends well; still the fine's the crown;
..............Whate'er the course, the end is the renown. (4.4.37-42)

Settings
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.......The action begins in Roussillon, a region in southern France, then moves to other locales, including Paris, France; Florence, Italy; and Marseilles, France. Bertram, one of the central characters in the play, is the Count of Roussillon.

Characters
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Protagonist: Helena
Antagonist: Class System That Discriminates Against Persons of Low Birth

Bertram: Self-Centered and immature Count of Roussillon, who rejects the woman who loves him because of her inferior social status.
Countess of Roussillon: Kindly and level-headed mother of Bertram.
Helena: Gentlewoman protected by the Countess; she is in love with Bertram even though he believes she is not good enough for him. When he leaves his home in Roussillon to make his mark in Paris at the court of the King of France, she later follows him in hopes of winning his love. Bertram's mother, the countess, abets her in her plan. 
King of France He suffers from a chronic ailment which Helena, schooled in the healing arts, has the power to cure. 
Duke of Florence
Antonio: Oldest son of the duke.
Parolles: Follower of Bertram. Parolles is a bad influence on the young man and is, in part, responsible for Bertram's less than gentlemanly behavior.
Lafeu: An old lord who warns Bertram that Parolles is a coward.
Lavache (Clown): Servant of the Countess of Roussillon.
Steward: Servant of the Countess of Roussillion.
Old Widow of Florence
Diana: Daughter of the Widow. Diana cooperates with Helena in a scheme to trick Bertram into pledging his love for Helena. 
Violenta, Mariana: Neighbors and friends of the Widow.
Citizens of Florence
A Page
First French Lord: He carries out a plot that reveals Parolles as a coward.
Six Soldiers: They assist the first French lord.
Second French Lord
Astringer: Man who acts as a messenger for Helena.
Minor Characters: Lords, Officers, Soldiers, Gentlemen

Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2003

I would I had that corporal soundness now, 
As when thy father and myself in friendship 
First tried our soldiership! (1.2.34-36) 

                       I have seen a medicine 
That’s able to breathe life into a stone, 
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary¹
With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch, 
Is powerful to araise King Pepin,² nay, 
To give great Charlemain³ a pen in ’s [in his] hand, 
And write to her a love-line. (2.1.67-73) 

My honour’s at the stake; which to defeat, 
I must produce my power. Here, take her hand, 
Proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift. (2.3.136-138) 

And on your finger in the night I’ll put 
Another ring, that what in time proceeds 
May token to the future our past deeds. (4.2.73-75) 

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WIDOW    Gentle madam,
You never had a servant to whose trust
Your business was more welcome.
HELENA    Nor you, mistress,
Ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour
To recompense your love: doubt not but heaven
Hath brought me up to be your daughter's dower,
As it hath fated her to be my motive
And helper to a husband. (lines 17-25)..

.......All's Well That Ends Well exhibits a maturity of style equal, in some instances, to that displayed in Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Some of the most beautiful imagery in the play is expressed by Helena. In the following metaphor, she compares Bertram to a bright star too high for her to reach. The light imagery is reminiscent of that in Romeo and Juliet, written ten years before. 

        It were 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.⁴ (1.1.47-60) 

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring 
Their fiery torcher⁵ his diurnal⁶ring,⁷
Ere twice in murk and occidental damp 
Moist Hesperus⁸ hath quench’d his sleepy lamp, 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, 
Health shall live free and sickness freely die. (2.1.163-171)

.......All's Well That Ends Well contains dialogue in prose, unrhymed verse, rhymed verse, and poetry. 

Prose is the language of everyday conversation. Sentences may be short or long, and there is no intended rhyme.
Unrhymed verse contains a metric pattern (that is, a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables) and a limited number of syllables per line. Shakespeare generally wrote his unrhymed verse in iambic pentameter, meaning that most lines (except those containing short answers, such as yes or no) contain five pairs of syllables, for a total of ten syllables. Each pair of syllables contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. For more information about metric patterns and iambic pentameter, click here. 
Rhymed verse is like unrhymed verse except that a syllable (or syllables) at the end of each line rhymes with a syllable (or syllables) at the end of another line.
Poetry in Shakespeare contains a metric pattern and a rhyming pattern but is not part of a conversation. 

Prose Passage (3.6.6-11)

BERTRAM   Do you think I am so far deceived in him? 
FIRST LORD   Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge, without any malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he’s a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy your lordship’s entertainment. 
SECOND LORD   It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his virtue, which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty business in a main danger fail you. 
BERTRAM   I would I knew in what particular action to try him. 
SECOND LORD   None better than to let him fetch off his drum, which you hear him so confidently undertake to do. 
FIRST LORD   I, with a troop of Florentines, will suddenly surprise him: such I will have whom I am sure he knows not from the enemy. We will bind and hoodwink him so, that he shall suppose no other but that he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries, when we bring him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at his examination: if he do not, for the promise of his life and in the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you and deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my judgment in anything.

Verse Passage Without Rhyme (1.2.29-58)

KING   Youth, thou bear’st thy father’s face; 
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, 
Hath well compos’d thee. Thy father’s moral parts 
Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris. 
BERTRAM   My thanks and duty are your majesty’s. 
KING   I would I had that corporal soundness now, 
As when thy father and myself in friendship 
First tried our soldiership! He did look far
Into the service of the time and was 
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long; 
But on us both did haggish age steal on, 
And wore us out of act. It much repairs me 
To talk of your good father. In his youth 
He had the wit which I can well observe 
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest 
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted 
Ere they can hide their levity in honour. 
So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness 
Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were, 
His equal had awak’d them; and his honour, 
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when 
Exception bid him speak, and at this time 
His tongue obey’d his hand: who were below him 
He us’d as creatures of another place, 
And bow’d his eminent top to their low ranks, 
Making them proud of his humility, 
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man 
Might be a copy to these younger times, 
Which, follow’d well, would demonstrate them now 
But goers backward.

Verse Passage With Rhyme (2.1.179-186)

KING   Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak, 
His powerful sound within an organ weak; 
And what impossibility would slay
In common sense, sense saves another way. 
Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate
Worth name of life in thee hath estimate; 
Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, virtue, all
That happiness and prime can happy call

Poetry (Recited by the Clown Beginning at Line 29 of 1.3)

Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,
Why the Grecians sacked Troy?
Fond done, done fond,
Was this King Priam’s joy?
With that she sighed as she stood,
With that she sighed as she stood,
And gave this sentence then;
Among nine bad if one be good,
Among nine bad if one be good,
There’s yet one good in ten.

One: Express ordinary, undistinguished observations coming from the surface of the mind rather than its active, ruminating interior.
Two: Make quick, one-line replies such as “Ay, my lord” that are the stuff of day-to-day conversations.
Three: Present auditory relief for audiences (or visual relief for readers) from the intellectual and connotative density of the verse passages.
Four: Suggest madness or senility. In King Lear, Lear speaks almost exclusively in verse in the first half of the play. Then suddenly, he lurches back and forth between verse and prose, perhaps to suggest the frenzied state of his aging mind. Hamlet sometimes shifts to prose in front of observers, perhaps in hopes of presenting his feigned madness as real.
Five: Depict the rambling, desultory path of conversation from a tongue loosened by alcohol, as in Henry IV Part I and Henry IV Part II.
Six: Poke fun at characters who lack the wit to versify their lines.
Seven: Demonstrate that prose has merits as a literary medium. In Shakespeare’s day, verse (and its elegant cousin, poetry) was the sine qua non of successful writing. As an innovator, Shakespeare may have wanted to tout the merits of prose. Thus, on occasion, he infused his plays with prose passages so graceful and thought-provoking that they equalled, and sometimes even surpassed, the majesty of verse or poetry passages. Such a prose passage is the following, spoken by Hamlet in Act II, Scene II:
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

One: Express deep emotion requiring elevated language. Because nobles and commoners were both capable of experiencing profound emotion, both expressed their emotions in verse from time to time.
Two: Make wise, penetrating, and reflective observations that require lofty language. Such a passage is a famous one recited by the outlaw Jaques in Act II, Scene VII, of As You Like It. The passage–which begins with the often-quoted line “All the world’s a stage”–philosophizes about the “seven ages” of man, from infancy to senility. 
Three: Present a lyrical poem as a separate entity, like the famous song in Act V, Scene III, of As You Like It. The first stanza of that poem follows:
............It was a lover and his lass,
............With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
............That o’er the green corn-field did pass
............In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
............When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
............Sweet lovers love the spring.
Four: Inject irony. When the highborn speak humble prose and the hoi polloi speak elegant verse, as is sometimes the case in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare may be saying up can be down, and down can be up. In The Merchant, the noble characters are just as reprehensible as–or perhaps even more reprehensible than–the workaday, unsophisticated characters. Portia is often depicted in critical analyses of the play as its noblest character. But a close reading of the play reveals her as a racist and a self-seeking conniver. Thus, Shakespeare makes her tongue wag in prose and verse, revealing her Janus personality.
Five: Suggest order and exactitude. A character who speaks in precise rhythms and patterns is a character with a tidy brain that plans ahead and executes actions on schedule.

.......Following are examples of figures of speech in All's Well That Ends Well. 

Anaphora

There shall your master have a thousand loves, 
A mother, and a mistress, and a friend, 
A phœnix, captain, and an enemy, 
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign, 
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear; 
His humble ambition, proud humility, 
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, 
His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world 
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms, (1.1.85-93)

[H]e lost a wife 
Whose beauty did astonish the survey 
Of richest eyes, whose words all ears took captive, 
Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn’d to serve 
Humbly call’d mistress. (5.3.20-24)

The congregated college have concluded 
That labouring art can never ransom nature (2.1.119-120)

Find fairer fortune (2.3.81)

Where death and danger dog the heels of worth (3.4.17)

                  [W]hat impossibility would slay 
In common sense, sense saves another way. (2.1.181-182)
 

He wears his honour in a box, unseen (2.3.219)
Comparison of honour to attire

           [W]hen you have our roses, 
You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves 
And mock us with our bareness. (4.2.25-27)
Diana compares herself to a rosebush.

My chastity’s the jewel of our house, (4.2.57)
Comparison of chastity to a jewel

LAFEU   ’Twas a good lady, ’twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such another herb. 
CLOWN   Indeed, sir, she was the sweet-marjoram of the salad, or, rather the herb of grace.
Comparison of a woman to food

A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honour. (4.4.38)
Comparison of scar to a uniform (livery)

I am not a day of season, 
For thou mayst see a sunshine and a hail 
In me at once; but to the brightest beams 
Distracted clouds give way: so stand thou forth;   44
The time is fair again. (5.3.41-45)
The king compares himself to rapidly changing weather.

O strange men! 
That can such sweet use make of what they hate. (4.4.25-26)

[D]isgraces have of late knocked too often at my door (4.1.11)
Comparison of disgraces to visitors entreating entry at a door

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living. (1. 2. 20) 
Lafeu addresses Helena on her expressions of grief. 

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there 
Where most it promises. . . (1. 2. 144-145).
Helena, using a paradox, addresses the King of France on failed cures for his fistula.

A young man married is a man that’s marr’d. (2. 3. 238) 
Using alliteration, Parolles addresses Bertram after Bertram’s wedding.

The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together. . . (4. 3. 29). 
The First Lord addresses the Second Lord on Bertram’s changing fortunes. A metaphor compares life to a web of mingled yard.

           [T]ime will bring on summer, 
When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns, 
And be as sweet as sharp. (4.4.37-39)
Helena makes this observation when speaking to Diana.

.......Helena and the Countess of Rousillon are both strong women. Helena is courageous and persistent; she is also highly intelligent, the proof of which is her mastery of the medical arts. When Bertram takes no notice of her and goes off to Paris, she pines for a while, then acts decisively, traveling to Paris herself. There the king suffers from an apparently incurable fistula. When Helena claims that she can cure him, the king allows her to treat him under penalty of death if she fails. With the king's promise that if she succeeds she may choose a future husband from among the men at court, she proceeds and heals the king. She chooses Bertram, of course, and the king orders him to marry her. 
.......When Bertram abandons her after their wedding, she is broken-hearted. But thanks to a little luck and help from other women, she wins Bertram back. The countess, well aware of Helena’s excellent qualities, encourages Helena in her pursuit of her spoiled son, perhaps in the realization that Helena can help Bertram to mature. Her support of Helena underscores her strength of character. In an age when other mothers of high social standing attempted to make a match for their sons based on pedigree, the countess has the courage to endorse a woman of the lower class as a possible future daughter-in-law. It is interesting to note that the countess acts in a fatherly role in advising Bertram on the ways of the world. She gives Bertram a short farewell “lecture” reminiscent of the lecture Polonius gives to Laertes (in Hamlet: 1. 3. 66-88) before Laertes leaves home. Following is the advice the countess gives: 

Be thou blest, Bertram; and succeed thy father
In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue 
Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness 
Share with thy birthright! 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 check’d for silence, 
But never tax’d for speech. What heaven more will 
That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head! Farewell, my lord; 
’Tis an unseason’d courtier; good my lord, 
Advise him. (1.1.24-35)

.......French lords expose Parolles as a coward by ambushing and capturing him, then making him think he is in the custody of the enemy. He learns a lesson, which serves as a kind of moral that he presents to the audience:

Yet am I thankful: if my heart were great 
’Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more; 
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft  140
As captain shall: simply the thing I am 
Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart, 
Let him fear this; for it will come to pass 
That every braggart shall be found an ass.  144
Rust, sword! cool, blushes! and Parolles, live
Safest in shame! being fool’d, by foolery thrive! 
There’s place and means for every man alive. (4.3.138-147)

1. In the age of Shakespeare, it was not uncommon for a young man of high social standing to reject a woman because of her low social standing—and vice versa. How important is social status to marriageable young men and women in today’s society? 
2. Write an informative essay about the status of women in England or France in Shakespeare’s time.
3. Which character in the play do you most admire? Which do you least admire?
4. Write a psychological profile of Bertram or Helena, focusing on salient characteristics.
5. Was Helena’s method of ensnaring Bertram—the bedroom trick in which she pretends to be Diana—moral?
6. Bertram and Helena are reconciled at the end. Will their marriage last? 

Notes

1...canary: Popular dance in the courts of Spain and France in the Sixteenth Century.
2...Pepin: Pepin the Short (714?-768), King of the Franks from 751 to 768.
3...Charlemain: Charlemagne (742-814), King of the Franks from 768 to 814. He was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800. 
4...reliques: Variant spelling of relics (keepsakes or any other objects from the past).
5...torcher: Reference to Apollo as the bearer of light (the sun).
6...diurnal: Occurring daily.
7...ring: The round-the-world trip the sun makes.
8...Hesperus: Evening star.
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