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• PROGRAM NOTES

• All's Well That Ends Well Photo Gallery

Production Information

Reviews

PROGRAM NOTES

The Playwright

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), recognized in much of the world as the greatest of all dramatists. Hundreds of editions of his plays have been published, including translations in all major languages. Scholars have written thousands of books and articles about his plots, characters, themes, and language. He is the most widely quoted author in history, and his plays have been performed more times than those of any other dramatist.

After more than 400 years of unrivaled popularity, Shakespeare remains our greatest entertainer and perhaps our most profound thinker.

He had a remarkable knowledge of human behavior, which he was able to communicate through his portrayal of a wide variety of characters. He was able to enter fully into the point of view of each of his characters and to create vivid dramatic situations in which to explore human motivations and behavior. His mastery of poetic language and dramatic technique enabled him to combine these multiple viewpoints, complex human motives and actions to produce a uniquely compelling - and universal - theatrical experience.

The Play

When All’s Well That Ends Well begins, life seems dark indeed. The Countess has just buried her husband; her son Bertram is departing for Paris, having, on his father's death, become ward of the King; Helena -- whose own father is recently dead -- weeps, not for her dead father, but for the loss of Bertram, whom she secretly and passionately adores, her own "bright, particular star." In Paris, the King of France is dying, so that Bertram travels from one house of mourning to another.

It is at this point that the life force at the heart of comedy manifests itself in Helena, who takes herself and her knowledge of medicine to Paris. In the first of the play's folk-tale incidents, she cures the dying King and wins Bertram as her husband -- but husband in name only, in that Bertram, Count of Rossillion, is appalled at the thought of being married to a poor, non-aristocratic girl whom he has thought of as a kind of sister. He will accept her as his wife, he says mockingly, only if she can miraculously become pregnant with his child and can get from his finger the family ring.

Much of the action of the play centers on Helena's conversion of this cruel dismissal into a challenge. She meets the challenge with wit and ingenuity, reenacting folk-tale stories of clever, searching wives that go back as far as the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Her journey is a rare blend of religious pilgrimage and romantic adventure.

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