All's Not Well, the War has Only Just Begun.

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This review of All’s Well That Ends Well corresponds with the lecture from The Hardcore Literature Book Club with Benjamin McEvoy: https://www.patreon.com/hardcoreliter...

While reading All's Well That Ends Well, I was thinking to myself that the plot feels more like a story from The Canterbury Tales rather than a Shakespearean play - and then Benjamin mentioned this exact thought in the lecture. I am glad that I am not alone in this feeling.

All’s Well That Ends Well is certainly full of sexual inuendo; some blatant and some subtle. The more blatant being Helena’s comments about defending her virginity from men. Also blatant was Bertram’s heated courtship of Diana. More on the subtle end of the spectrum, there seems to be hinting of a sexual relationship between Bertram and Parolles; as if fleeing Paris was as much about the two men being together as it was Bertram escaping marriage duties. Clown also seems to have knowledge of this homosexual relationship, as he ruthlessly teases Parolles in Act V Scene II. Shakespeare being British perhaps had a bitter view of French royalty, as he makes many references to the male anus in All’s Well That Ends Well, most boldly making a joke of the French king by inflicting him with an embarrassing and mortal wound - anal fistula.

I think the reason that so many people feel that this play is Shakespeare’s worst is because of one key deviation: character development. Despite being a play consisting of only dialog, All’s Well That Ends Well lacks the character development of Shakespeare’s other plays; truly, the play lacks any clear protagonist, antagonist, hero, or villain. In my opinion, All’s Well That Ends Well was meant to be a clever social commentary rather than a serious play. Or perhaps a commentary about how marriage is even worse than war – that it is better to inflict physical pain upon one’s own face than to bed your own wife. The true main characters are intangible: marriage, betrayal, love, blackmail, settling for less. For example, I believe that Shakespeare the character of Clown to be metaphor for truth, because comedy is a place where truth can be laid bare with brutal honesty. To fully flesh the character of Clown would have been to minimize his importance as an ironic voice of reason and truth.

As Benjamin states in the lecture, “Shakespeare is the ultimate Rorschach test.” I certainly did feel my fear of marriage when reading this play, but I probably wouldn’t have recognized it without Benjamin’s lecture. This is a shining example of the added value that Benjamin’s lectures bring to the reading assignments. The mention of Ted Hughes and his research about Shakespeare was an interesting aside. As Benjamin says, it does appear that Ted Hughes is projecting his own frustrations with his marriage to Sylvia Plath onto Shakespeare’s play. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to be married to Sylvia Plath, but I have also read accusations that Ted Hughes was abusive. Surely her suicide was at least somewhat influenced by her husband, although she was no stranger to suicide attempts even before she met Ted. An equivalence could be drawn between the fake suicide and deception of the women in All’s Well That Ends Well and Ted Hughes marriage, but I’m probably reaching for meaning where there is none.

This play also reminds me of the Old Testament stories of Abraham where, upon entering cities, he would lie about his wife by calling her his sister to protect himself, even with the consequence of kings sleeping with his wife. But it was always the king who was punished by God, not Abraham, despite being a selfish liar. Of course, Abraham was infamously childless until he slept with his wife’s slave, and his wife only became pregnant in her old age by divine intervention. Again, we see a complicated view of marriage as deceptive and manipulative, and perhaps the French king is even Shakespeare’s stand-in for God. It is a happy ending that actually isn’t happy at all, because the rift, competition, and war between Ishmael and Isaac is alive and well even today. Perhaps in the same way, marriage is just the beginning of a war between Bertram and Helena. It is a complicated and depressing view of marriage, and I can’t help but wonder if Shakespeare drew inspiration for All’s Well That Ends Well from Abraham’s domestic life.

I really enjoyed the character Clown, and I found myself laughing out loud at many of his lines, but my favorite stanza from the play came when Helena was bartering with the king:

If I break time, or flinch in property
Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die,
And well deserved: not helping, death's my fee;
But, if I help, what do you promise me?



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All's Well That Ends Well