(14) All’s Well That Ends Well

Another one in the bag, the second to last comedy in the list, and it was a good one, quite good actually, one of my favorites. A blasphemously quick summary: A low-born girl (Helena) is in love with a high-born man (Bertram). To win his hand in marriage, she cures an ailing king who then orders Bertram, his subject, to marry her. Bertram, a tool for sure, can think of nothing worse than marrying a lower class woman (“A poor physician's daughter my wife! Disdain rather corrupt me forever!”). However, the king forces him to do so and he does, and then immediately runs away, forcing Helena to hatch a typically tricky plan to win him back. Crazy, madcap hijinks ensue.

It’s actually not as lighthearted and happy-go-lucky as the above passage may suggest. Shakespeare is again coloring outside the lines (shocking, right?), blurring the divisions between comedy and tragedy, or semi-tragedy, or tragicomedy, or something...else? To be sure, there are comedic moments, but generally speaking things are quite dark in this one, with tones of death and decay everywhere, coupled with a healthy dose of lies, deceit, and mental abuse. Happy times!

But speaking of happy times…at least there is a happy ending…kind of. Indeed, I'm really not sure how happy the ending is. It’s as if The Bard were grudgingly submitting to the requirements of the comedic genre, abruptly, right at the very end. The perfunctory, curtain-closing “all’s well that ends well” ending fulfills the obligation to the form, an obligation that even Shakespeare seems unwilling to wholly break.

Interestingly, the Riverside introduction to the next play (and last comedy) on my list (Measure for Measure), suggests that Shakespeare was perhaps tiring (is that the right word?) of the genre in these late career comedies. The transitional elements one finds in these plays, the so-called comedic problem plays, exist in large part because of this mixing of genre. Perhaps they are intentional and indicative of an artist changing, or even abandoning, forms? I think I can buy that.