ABSTRACT
Shakespeare's play All's Well That Ends Well offers an unsentimental examination of the problems women encounter within such a male-centred theological tradition. Marian moments or allusions in All's Well That Ends Well are, more complex than the relatively explicit celebrations of the Virgin which characterized the medieval period. The Marian iconography of All's Well That Ends Well teaches much harder lessons than the concluding scene's triumph of female solidarity. The play's resolution depends on a mutually empowering trinity of female love between the women characters that can recreate Helen from the annihilation to which Bertram's hate has doomed her. Alls Well offers a fragmented yet powerful imitation of the miracle of the Incarnation in the virginal Diana's cooperation with Helen so that she can become pregnant by Bertram. Diana's confident proclamation that she is still a maid, never gave Bertram her ring, and yet knows her bed defiled re-presents the familiar mystery of the Incarnation embodied by the Virgin Mary.
