All’s Well That Ends Well

“A MINGLED YARN”

What You'll Learn

  • The story and contexts of All’s Well That Ends Well

  • What sickness and cure can mean, in this play, in the context of marriage and love

  • How a darkly-inflected comedy reflects a Shakespearean perspective on the shape of human life

Course Outline

  • Episode 1: Summary of the play with historical and cultural context

  • Episode 2: Analysis of the play’s imagery, ethical dilemmas, and genre, and how they relate to the meaning of human actions

  • Episode 3: Actors’ recordings of key speeches from the play and discussion of those speeches

Works Consulted for this Course

  • Garber, Marjorie B. Shakespeare After All. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.

  • Lupton, Julia Reinhard. Thinking with Shakespeare : Essays on Politics and Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

  • Maus, Katharine Eisaman. “Introduction,” All’s Well That Ends Well, in Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus and Gordon McMullan. 3rd ed.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

  • McCandless, David. “A Modern Perspective: All’s Well That Ends Well.” Folger Shakespeare Library. <https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/alls-well-that-ends-well/alls-well-that-ends-well-a-modern-perspective/> 

  • Shakespeare, William. All’s Well That Ends Well. Edited by Suzanne Gossett and Helen Wilcox. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2019.

 

All’s Well That Ends Well reverses the usual fairy-tale trope and depicts a young woman on a quest to win a man. Helen, an extraordinary character with elements of the modern professional and the medieval saint, sets out to secure Bertram, a nobleman, for her husband. But the fairy tale plot is further reversed when Helen appears to win Bertram, only to have him flee from her. Helen embarks on a second quest to win him for a second time, with a plot that deceives Bertram but may also help cure him. This ambiguous but moving comedy asks how marriage is made real, how we can heal from our mistakes, and what it means to end well. In this course, you’ll learn the story and context of All’s Well That Ends Well, explore its questions around cure and care, and discover how this play reflects Shakespeare’s search for a dramatic form that captures the complex, “mingled” form of the good and ill in human life. 

In Part 1, you’ll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Julia Lupton, Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. This episode introduces the historical, religious, and literary contexts that shape this play, which combines modern, progressive political dimensions, elements of myth and folklore, and spiritual notions of grace. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean. 

Part 2 discusses the play’s most significant images, of sickness and death, of medicine, and grace. It asks how these themes are reflected in the complicated relationship between Helen and Bertram, focusing particularly on the deceptive plot that Helen uses to secure him in the “dark house” that becomes a place of mystery and renewal. The episode goes on to discuss the role of darkness in comedy more generally - do tragic events undermine comedy, or make it more meaningful? It concludes by asking how the play’s “mingled” character reflects a Shakespearean perspective on the character of human life: how time reveals and reshapes the meaning of our actions, and in that way, can help us recover. 

Part 3 features close-readings of three key speeches from Helen that reveal her own mingled virtues and flaws and the “remedies” she hopes to find. 

You can hear the third episode of this course for free below. For access to the full course and all of Season Two, subscribe today on Himalaya Learning. Use the promo code BARD for 30 days free.

Speeches and Performers

  • Helen, Act 1, “O, were that all! …” (Amanda Harris)

  • Helen, Act 1, “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie …” (Maya Smoot)

  • Helen, Acts 3 and 4, “Why then tonight … Yet, I pray you …” (Amanda Harris)

Course Instructor

Julia Reinhard Lupton

Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine

Julia Reinhard Lupton is professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, where she co-directs the New Swan Shakespeare Center. She is the author or co-author of five books on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life, Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life, and Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology. Editorial projects include Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (with Donovan Sherman) and Shakespeare and Hospitality (with David Goldstein). She is a former Guggenheim Fellow and a former Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. She is a dedicated community teacher who loves sharing Shakespeare broadly.