““No legacy is so rich as honesty...”

Shakespeare’s themes of social mobility and sexual misconduct make All’s Well That Ends Well seem like a startlingly modern play, despite the fact that it is one of the trickiest in the Shakespeare canon.

The heroine—Helena—was described as a prototype of the New Woman by George Bernard Shaw: an intelligent, resourceful female saddled with a man whose selfish conventionality is in mean contrast to her own noble nature.

Helena, a low-born ward of the Countess of Rossillion, cures the ailing King of France and is thereby rewarded for her ministries with the choice of any husband she wishes.

She claims as her prize the hand of the Countess’s son, Bertram.

Bertram however is so horrified at the idea of marrying a commoner that he runs off to join the war in Italy, specifying that he’ll only return in the unlikely event his virgin wife falls pregnant with his child.

Rather than bid good riddance, Helena decides to see what she can do…

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) was an English playwright poet, and actor, regarded as the world's pre-eminent dramatist, and the greatest writer in the English language. Author of such timeless works as Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear, he is often called the “Bard of Avon,” England's national poet.