ABSTRACT
All’s Well That Ends Well has been classified among the problem comedies, perhaps mainly because Bertram has failed to captivate; he has been found even more devoid of charm than Angelo in Measure for Measure, the companion ‘problem’ comedy. Parolles, often seen as a quasi-vice figure in a morality play contest with virtuous Helena, and about whom Wheeler, oddly, has very little to say, is perhaps the most brilliant dramatic invention in All’s Well. The predicament that is developed in Act I of All’s Well offers a powerful exemplification of Freud’s observation upon family quadrangles. ‘The action of All’s Well’, Richard Wheeler says, ‘dramatizes neither a liberation from nor a transformation of obstacles that obstruct the marriage to Helena’. The King, by the way, is still, at the end of All’s Well, indefatigably in search of a marriage partner – this time for Diana Capilet.
