Isaiah Davis (1606 words)

Isaiah Davischaracterizations? Are we more likely to champion Helena as a feminist hero (or a virgin hero) or are progressive contemporary patrons more likely to castigate her excessive obsequiousness? Furthermore, do modern spectators jar at the play’s archaic folk themes? Do we embrace the fairy-tale as we do television sitcoms or do we dismiss the tired plot machinations and mechanical devices? Is there fresh wisdom to be gained from this conventional, 17th century play?
Perhaps Shakespeare’s tale–now simultaneously old and new–resonates for contemporary audiences most particularly. Certainly our fascination with miracle health cures and talk shows that feature such topics as “Men Afraid of Commitment,” “Bad Men and the Women Who Love Them,” and “Effeminate Men and Feminizes” can find purchase in Shakespeare’s text. Our culture is still fascinated with generational tensions (how many times have we heard our parents lament bygone days when children were more respectful of their elders, people were more concerned with moral values, and Shakespeare was more accessible!) and identity politics (Is Helena a bitch? a feminist? an ingratiating doormat? Is Bertram a wimp? One of the themes that emerges from Shakespeare’s comedy All’s Well That Ends Well is the conflict between old and new, age and youth, wisdom and folly, reason and passion. As one critic points out, a simple glance at the characters of the play reveals an almost equally balanced cast of old and young. “In performance it is apparent that the youth of the leading characters, Helena, Bertram, Diana and Parolles, is in each case precisely balanced by the greater age of their counterparts, the Countess, the King of France, the Widow of Florence and the old counselor Lafeu.”1 Indeed, the dialectic between youth and age is established in the first act as the Countess sees a mirror of her former self in Helena’s love sick countenance in scene three when she exclaims “Even so it was with me when I was young,” and Bertram’s worthiness to the ailing King of France in the previous scene appears to hang upon his youthful resemblance to his deceased father. As the King explains, “Such a man might be a copy to these younger times,/Which followed well would demonstrate them now/But goers-backward” [I.2. 49-51].
Like so many literary youths of his day, Shakespeare went backward for his source material for All’s Well and based the play on Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. Boccaccio’s early sixteenth-century story revolves around Giletta of Narbona, the daughter of a wealthy and respected physician. Giletta, like Helena (the daughter of the deceased–and indigent–Gerard de Narbonne), falls in love with young count Beltramo, follows him to Paris where she remedies the King’s incurable disease, and, because of her newly-acquired royal favor, is granted the right to demand a husband: Beltramo. Despite the King’s elitist reluctance to grant Giletta her wish (which contrasts the Shakespearean monarch’s unmitigated blessing), he keeps his promise and orders the count to marry the physician’s daughter. The rest of Boccaccio’s story proceeds in like fashion to Shakespeare’s with the exception of Giletta’s arrival at Rossiglione (vs. Rossillion) with twin sons as opposed to a single fetus.
As W. W. Lawrence points out, conventional folk motifs such as “The Fulfillment of the Tasks” and “The Healing of the King” undergird Boccacio’s–and thus Shakespeare’s–tale.2 In addition to theses narrative devices, the play also contains another folk motif, that of the “bed-trick”–a frequently used convention in Renaissance drama that allows one lover to be substituted for another unbeknownst to the first party of a particular amorous tryst. Shakespeare relies on tradition to provide character types for him as well as thematic elements. The puffed-up Platean soldier or miles gloriosus figure makes his appearance in All’s Well in the guise of Parolles, who “descends from a venerable line of braggart warriors, talkers and not doers, who originate with Aristophanes and then swagger their way through Menander, Plautus, and Terrence into Elizabethan comedy.”3
Thus, Shakespeare collects old conventions, devices and stock characters to create a new fairy-tale, one that bears the distinctive mark of tradition but reveals new insights. For Shakespeare’s archetypal story is one that gives genesis to some difficult questions. As many critics testify, All’s Well differs from many of Shakespeare’s other comedies in its dark overtones. He illustrates certain problems at court but provides no Greenworld; he introduces a love story without two active lovers; he creates a seemingly equivocal heroine and a callow, prevaricating hero. “In this world,” Anne Barton explains, “unicorns do not exist to testify to the mystic power of virginity, and Prince Charming is likely to prefer the fashionably dressed elder sisters to beauty in rags. Love itself is not simply the servant of a fantastic plot, but a matter of complex adjustments within the personality.”4
Indeed, Shakespeare’s old skins produce potent and problematic new wine for, as many critics note, the psychologically complex characters in this play prove far too sophisticated for the formal stylistic vehicle that contains them. This fairy-tale ends happily, but only if we suspend our disbelief to allow for Bertram’s all too brief conversion and forgive him of certain newly rendered sins that further cast him as a rather unworthy prize. This fairy-tale ends happily if we can resolve the problems presented by Helena’s character: Is she a “saintly maiden” or a “cunning vixen”?5
It is this debate surrounding Helena that has most often caused critics to label All’s Well That Ends Well a problem play. Two diverse assessments of the heroine have been favored by Shakespearean critics throughout the history of this play. “Some regard her as a genuine romantic heroine–resourceful, yes, but also virtuous, feminine, charming, and modest. She never behaves cynically, and her motives are above reproach . The alternative view is that Helena mercilessly pursues Bertram. Whether she is at first motivated by love, sex [or] ambition [s]he sets out to trap Bertram, succeeds, and–when he flees her–captures him again. She gets the husband she deserves, a spoiled aristocrat.”6 More recent critics view Helena as one who successfully adopts a masculine subject position since it is her desire that drives the play/motivates the action and her gaze that is privately noted and publicly sanctioned. David McCandless argues that Helena is the subject and Bertram the object, one who “occupies the feminine space of the Other, even as he struggles to define himself as a man by becoming a military and sexual conqueror.”7 One problem with this argument concerning gender reversal in All’s Well (an issue that has caused the play to be regarded as controversial throughout it’s relatively meager production history) has to do with Helena’s self-abasing tendencies. In her first monologue, she is quick to set Bertram up as her “bright particular star” while she regards herself as too base to occupy “his sphere” and must be content to view this heavenly body from below. She is continually sabotaging her strong choices by delivering herself over to Bertram “guiding power.” McCandless argues that Helena’s moments of seemingly contradictory passive subordination are moments in which she simply performs the “feminine” or, as Teresa de Lauretis explains, reflects a cultural view of Woman, engages in communicating a role that she has been socialized to play since gender is, according to Judith Butler, a repetition of stylized, socially constructed acts.
Regardless, however, of the ways in which Helena’s character is interpreted (and many problems have equally been expressed by critics concerning the unsympathetic Bertram), it is clear that Shakespeare has left it up for us to decide–as he so often does. How do contemporary audiences deal with All’s Well ‘s problematic characterizations? Are we more likely to champion Helena as a feminist hero (or a virgin hero) or are progressive contemporary patrons more likely to castigate her excessive obsequiousness? Furthermore, do modern spectators jar at the play’s archaic folk themes? Do we embrace the fairy-tale as we do television sitcoms or do we dismiss the tired plot machinations and mechanical devices? Is there fresh wisdom to be gained from this conventional, 17th century play?
Perhaps Shakespeare’s tale–now simultaneously old and new–resonates for contemporary audiences most particularly. Certainly our fascination with miracle health cures and talk shows that feature such topics as “Men Afraid of Commitment,” “Bad Men and the Women Who Love Them,” and “Effeminate Men and Feminazis” can find purchase in Shakespeare’s text. Our culture is still fascinated with generational tensions (how many times have we heard our parents lament bygone days when children were more respectful of their elders, people were more concerned with moral values, and Shakespeare was more accessible!) and identity politics (Is Helena a bitch? a feminist? an ingratiating doormat? Is Bertram a wimp? a creep? secretly in love with Parolles?). Indeed, the problems inherent in this play seem especially appealing to a contemporary culture that strives to negotiate identity among the confusing and difficult landscape of gender politics and postmodern deconstruction. And rather than accept Helena’s all too confident statement that “All’s well that ends well,” we might more willingly embrace the King’s more ambiguous statement,” All yet seems well.” secretly in love with Parolles?). Indeed, the problems inherent in this play seem especially appealing to a contemporary culture that strives to negotiate identity among the confusing and difficult landscape of gender politics and postmodern deconstruction. And rather than accept Helena’s all too confident statement that “All’s well that ends well,” we might more willingly embrace the King’s more ambiguous statement,” All yet seems well.