All's Well That Ends Well

There are two driving forces in the social constructions of the characters in the play: honor and reputation. Honor is personal value determined through adherence to a moral code, whereas reputation is the perceived moral and social value a person has to others. Honor and reputation are related and are sometimes used interchangeably, but one may exist without the other. For example, Parolles has a good reputation in the beginning of the play, but little honor, and as his lack of honor becomes apparent to the other characters, his reputation suffers. The process of displaying honor generally centers on a shared moral code, but at heart it relies on a person’s inner sense of morality and their adherence to their own rules. A character may behave with a sense of honor while breaking these codes, or may be forced to choose between one form of honor and another. This means that some characters can display honor through creative transgressions against the status quo, such as Helen’s acquisition of reputation through her honorable healing of the King. Her skills and courage seemingly outweigh her gender transgression, which under other circumstances would ruin her reputation. Shakespeare’s use of soliloquy is essential to this understanding and to the portrayal of inner honor versus outer reputation. By showing the motivations, reasoning, and sincerity of a character in their private moments, the play enables the audience to parse their public behavior and the morality of their characters in a way that is impossible in real life. Thus, the tension and gap between honor and reputation is essential to revealing meanings in a play that revolves around deceit and trickery, and where maintaining honor and reputations is the stated goal of many characters in the play.

The King outlines honor in his description of Bertram’s father, the former Count of Rossillion, including wit, humility, bravery, and consistency. When the King says, “Such a man / Might be a copy to these younger times” (1.2.51-52), he is defending the status quo of his youth, noting that these “younger times,” meaning young men, are not as honorable as men used to be in the King’s youth. This conception of honor is partially contradictory, though, as it includes both pride and humility, sharpness and kindness, which explains how honor hinges on reputation. Whether someone perceives “contempt” or “bitterness” in someone’s behavior is largely subjective, meaning the King held a high opinion of the former Count, but others may have disagreed.

The best example of how honor and reputation can shift is Bertram’s love for Parolles in the early parts of the play. Bertram supports Parolles’s claims unconditionally until they prepare to leave Florence. When Parolles is called to testify in the final scene, though, Bertram says Parolles is “quoted for a most perfidious slave” (5.3.234), asking: “Am I or that or this for what he’ll utter, / That will speak anything?” (5.3.237-38). The actions of “quoted” and “will speak” indicate how reputation is publicly perceived honor and relies on the words of others. Bertram’s attempt, here, is to mask his own dishonor by smearing Parolles’s reputation; however, Parolles tells the truth in this instance, reflecting a greater true honor than Bertram displays. In the end, Parolles appears to be an honest coward, while Bertram appears to be a dishonorable hero, depending on his commendations from the Duke of Florence for salvation.

Though there is a lot of love language in the play and many uses of the word “love,” the play avoids a definition of love. It can be, alternately, obsession, lust, sex, seduction, marriage, duty, and obedience. It can be romantic, filial, maternal, or sexual. There are multiple examples of false love in the play that counter the reading that the play is a straightforward tale of true love winning out.

The play starts with and is propelled by Helen’s “love” for Bertram, but the nature of this love is unclear. She is set on him at all costs. If she only wanted to marry into nobility, then she could have married any of the lords offered to her by the King. Her choice to marry Bertram, and her declarations of love for him, frame her efforts throughout the play as acts of strongly felt love. Likewise, her stark shift from ambition and agency to total submission as Bertram’s wife in Act 2 indicates that her feelings are legitimate enough to enable her to act dutifully. When the Countess first discovers Helen’s interest in Bertram, she remarks that Helen’s feelings are natural, and “This thorn / Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong” (1.3.131-32), meaning the sting of unrequited love is a part of growing up. In the Countess’s view, then, Helen’s love for Bertram is not “true love,” so much as it is first love, and Helen’s inevitable struggle to marry Bertram can be reframed in the Countess’s view as the “thorn” of developing in adolescence. Similarly, reading Bertram as a young man lustfully running off to Florence to seduce Diana mirrors Helen’s journey to Paris and Florence to seduce Bertram. In each case, the “true love” of the play can be described more as sexual attraction among young people than divine or cosmic romance. Additionally, Bertram’s disinterest in Helen dampens the romance of their marriage, as, in the end, Bertram only agrees to marry Helen after he has sex with her, she acquires his ring, and she reveals her pregnancy.

From a social and contractual point of view, marriage, duty, and sex were virtually indivisible in Renaissance England. Personal choice and feelings of love were often considered irrelevant to marriage. Wedding or betrothal promises to “love” might mean real affection but it was sufficient for them to denote duty, partnership, and sex (inside marriage, ostensibly for the purpose of getting children). This was not considered insincerity: Duty was considered the highest form of love as the least selfish. The Epilogue of the play, which notes that the ending is only happy “if this suit be won” (E.2), implies that Bertram is not in love with Helen, nor will Helen’s pregnancy accomplish more than forcing Bertram into marriage. His declaration to “love” her need not be taken as more than his commitment to the marriage and his feelings are debatable. The question of whether this is a satisfying ending depends on individual definitions of love and marriage, and the responses of a modern audience are likely to be different than those of a contemporaneous one. Shakespeare certainly encourages these considerations, however, showing that they were of real interest at the time. As Parolles says of Bertram’s affair with Diana: “He loved her, sir, and loved her not” (5.3.282), wordplay that points out that love is a feeling and an action. “Love” is here a euphemism for sex. Bertram “loved” Diana in the sense that he had sex with her but he did not feel real love for her and did not treat her with love, deserting her. Parolles’s words at this point in the play remind us that Bertram, in a dark reflection of his previous situation, does not love Helen but will be obliged into the action of loving her, in the sense of fulfilling the marriage dutifully. The nature of love and duty are integral to the complexity of this “problem play.”