All's Well That Ends Well
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William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.
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All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
by
William Shakespeare
Introduction
The Characters of the Play
Act I
SCENE I. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
SCENE II. Paris. The King’s palace.
SCENE III. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
Act II
SCENE I. Paris. The King’s palace.
SCENE II. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
SCENE III. Paris. The King’s palace.
SCENE IV. Paris. The King’s palace.
SCENE V. Paris. The King’s palace.
Act III
SCENE I. Florence. The Duke’s palace.
SCENE II. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
SCENE III. Florence. Before the Duke’s palace.
SCENE IV. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
SCENE V. Florence. Without the walls. A tucket afar off.
SCENE VI. Camp before Florence.
SCENE VII. Florence. The Widow’s house.
Act IV
SCENE I. Without the Florentine camp.
SCENE II. Florence. The Widow’s house.
SCENE III. The Florentine camp.
SCENE IV. Florence. The Widow’s house.
SCENE V. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
Act V
SCENE I. Marseilles. A street.
SCENE II. Rousillon. Before the Count’s palace.
SCENE III. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
Epilogue
Introduction
All’s Well That Ends Well was probably written later in Shakespeare’s career, between 1601 and 1608.
The five acts follow the action of Helena, a lowborn beauty, who pines for the son of her guardian, Count Bertram. She is granted his hand as a reward for curing the King, but Bertram runs away to war, declaring When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband.
Helena tricks him into giving her his family ring and sleeping with her, by posing as Diana, the virginal daughter of a widow. These were his conditions for being her true husband and he agrees to be a good husband in the final act.
Shakespeare’s source is most likely a story in William Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure, which was in fact a translation of the ninth story from the third day of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
The Characters of the Play
King of France.
The Duke of Florence.
Bertram, Count of Rousillon.
Lafeu, an old Lord.
Parolles, a follower of Bertram.
Several young French Lords, that serve with Bertram in the Florentine War.
Steward, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon.
Clown, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon.
A Page, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon.
Countess of Rousillon, Mother to Bertram.
Helena, a Gentlewoman protected by the Countess.
An old Widow of Florence.
Diana, daughter to the Widow.
Violenta, neighbour and friend to the Widow.
Mariana, neighbour and friend to the Widow.
Lords attending on the King; Officers; Soldiers, &c., French and Florentine.
Act I
Scene I. Rousillon. The Count’s palace.
Enter Bertram, the Countess of Rousillon, Helena, and 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 practises 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 Narbon.
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 Gerard de Narbon?
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, Helena; go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than have it.
Helena 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.
Countess If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.
Bertram Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Lafeu How understand we that?
Countess 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 cheque’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.
Lafeu He cannot want the best
That shall attend his love.
Countess Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram.
Exit
Bertram [To Helena] The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you! Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her.
Lafeu Farewell, pretty lady: you must hold the credit of your father.
Exeunt Bertram and Lafeu
Helena O, were that all! 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,