Conflict in Alls Well That Ends Well Essay -- Alls Well That Ends We

Conflict in Alls Well That Ends Well One of the themes that emerges from Shakespeares waggery Alls Well That Ends Well is the conflict between experienced and new, age and juvenility, firmness and folly, reason and passion. As one critic points out, a simple discern at the characters of the play reveals an almost equally balanced cast of old and young. In perfor valet de chambrece it is apparent that the youth of the leading characters, Helena, Bertram, Diana and Parolles, is in apiece case precisely balanced by the greater age of their regarderparts, the Countess, the queen of France, the Widow of Florence and the old counselor Lafeu.1 Indeed, the dialectic between youth and age is established in the first act as the Countess sees a mirror of her former self in Helenas love sick provide in scene three when she exclaims Even so it was with me when I was young, and Bertrams purity to the ailing King of France in the previous scene appears to hang upon his youthful resembla nce to his deceased father. As the King explains, Such a man might be a copy to these younger times,/Which followed well would constitute them now/But goers- averse I.2. 49-51.Like so many literary youths of his day, Shakespeare went backward for his source material for Alls Well and based the play on Giovanni Boccaccios Decameron. Boccaccios untimely sixteenth-century story revolves around Giletta of Narbona, the daughter of a wealthy and respected physician. Giletta, kindred Helena (the daughter of the deceased--and indigent--Gerard de Narbonne), falls in love with young count Beltramo, follows him to Paris where she remedies the Kings incurable disease, and, because of her newly-acquired royal favor, is granted the right to demand a husband Beltramo. Despite ... ...ng the confusing and difficult landscape of gender government activity and postmodern deconstruction. And rather than accept Helenas all too confident dictation that Alls well that ends well, we might more willin gly embrace the Kings more enigmatic statement, All yet seems well.1 J.L. Styan, Alls Well That Ends Well (Manchester Manchester University Press, 1984) 15.2 W.W. Lawrence, Shakespeares worry Comedies, 1931 rpt (New York Ungar, 1960).3 Anne Barton, Introduction, Alls Well That Ends Well in The Riverside Shakespeare ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1974) 501.4 Ibid, 500.5 David McCandless, Helenas Bed-trick Gender and Performance in Alls Well That Ends Well Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994) 455.6 Richard A. Levin, Alls Well That Ends Well, and All Seems Well, Shakespeare Studies (1980) 131.7 McCandless, 450.