"Though honesty be no Puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart."
When Lafeu (ii. 3) is talking to Parolles of the marvellous cure of the King of France which Helena has undertaken, he has a hit at those who will find matter in it for a pious treatise:—
"Lafeu. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.
"Parolles. It is, indeed: if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in—what do you call there?—
"Laf. A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor."
Shakespeare clearly took a mischievous pleasure in imitating the title of a Puritanic work of edification.
This polemical tendency, which extends from Hamlet through All's Well that Ends Well to Measure for Measure, in the form of an increasingly marked opposition to the growing religious strictness and sectarianism of the day, with its accompaniment of hypocrisy, proves plainly that Shakespeare at this time shared the animosity of the Government towards both Puritanism and Catholicism.
Though there is little true mirth to be found in All's Well that Ends Well, the piece reminds us in various ways of some of Shakespeare's real comedies. The story resembles in several details that of The Merchant of Venice. Portia in disguise persuades the unwilling Bassanio to give up his ring to her; and Helena, in the darkness of night mistaken for another, coaxes Bertram out of the ring which he had made up his mind she should never obtain from him. In the closing scenes, both Bertram and Bassanio are minus their rings; both are wretched because they have not got them; and in both cases the knot is unravelled by their wives being found in possession of them. There is a more essential relation—that of direct contrast—between the story of All's Well that Ends Well and that of The Taming of the Shrew. The earlier comedy sets forth in playful fashion how a man by means of the attributes of his sex—physical superiority, boldness, and coolness—helped out by imperiousness, bluster, noise, and violence, wins the devotion of a passionately recalcitrant young woman. All's Well that Ends Well shows us how a woman, by means of the attributes of her sex—gentleness, goodness of heart, cunning, and finesse—conquers a vehemently recalcitrant man. And in both cases the pair are married before the action proper of the play begins.
Seeing that Shakespeare in The Taming of the Shrew followed the older play on the same subject, and that he took the story of All's Well that Ends Well from Boccaccio's Gilette of Narbonne, a translation of which appeared as early as 1566 in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, this contrast cannot be said to have been devised by the poet. But it is evident that one of the chief attractions of the latter subject for Shakespeare was the opportunity it offered him of delineating that rare phenomenon: a woman wooing a man and yet possessing and retaining all the charm of her sex. Shakespeare has worked out the figure of Helena with the tenderest partiality. Pity and admiration in concert seem to have guided his pen. We feel in his portraiture a deep compassion for the pangs of despised love—the compassion of one who himself has suffered—and over the whole figure of Helena he has shed a Raphael-like beauty. She wins all, charms all, wherever she goes—old and young, women and men—all except Bertram, the one in whom her life is bound up. The King and the old Lafeu are equally captivated by her, equally impressed by her excellences. Bertram's mother prizes her as if she were her daughter; more highly, indeed, than she prizes her own obstinate son. The Italian widow becomes so devoted to her that she follows her to a foreign country in order to vouch for her statement and win her back her husband.
She ventures all that she may gain her well-beloved, and in the pursuit of her aim shows an inventive capacity not common among women. For the real object of her journey to cure the King is, as she frankly confesses, to be near Bertram. As in the tale, she obtains the King's promise that she may, if she is successful in curing him, choose herself a husband among the lords of his court; but in Boccaccio it is the King who, in answer to her question as to the reward, gives her this promise of his own accord; in the play it is she who first states her wish. So possessed is she by her passion for one who does not give her a thought or a look. But when he rejects her (unlike Gilette in the tale), she has no desire to attain her object by compulsion; she simply says to the King with noble resignation—
"That you are well restored, my lord,
I'm glad; let the rest go."
She offers no objection when Bertram, immediately after the wedding, announces his departure, alleging pretexts which she does not choose to see through; she suffers without a murmur when, at the moment of parting, he refuses her a kiss. When she has learnt the whole truth, she can at first utter nothing but short ejaculations (iii. 2): "My lord is gone, for ever gone." "This is a dreadful sentence!" "Tis bitter!"—and presently she leaves her home, that she may be no hindrance to his returning to it. Predisposed though she is to self-confidence and pride, no one could possibly love more tenderly and humbly.