Saturday, February 28, 2015

Review: All's Well That Ends Well




All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars




All's well that ends well? Is that so, William?

Helena is a young woman whose father has just died. Mourning and in love, she cures the King of France of a disease. In exchange, the King is going to let her marry with whomever she pleases. Thus, she chooses the man he loves, but he does not love her back. In fact, he says she's not going to be her wife unless she obtains his family ring and she carries his child.

The man Helena loves is not a good guy. After the King forces he to marry Helena, he quickly flees France and goes to war. While battling, he also gets fame of seducing virgins. This was the perfect moment for Helena to introduce herself and try to get Bertram to love her. She knows the man is not nice, yet she still loves him and she still tries to win his love.

Until now, I think this one is the most quotable of all Shakespeare's play. I've not even read half his plays, but this one was fairly entertaining and I found myself thinking that the man knew to write and that he seriously knew what to say and when to say it.

As for the ending, is it really true that when something ends well, everything is well? The ending in this play was supposed to be... happy. But is everything really well at the end? The thing is, it felt forced. Like, Helena lost her virginity by Bertram and she got his ring and so... he falls in love with her out of the blue and marries her just like that? I mean, at the beginning, he hated her, but he fell for her that easy?

I don't know if the ending feeling so unrealistic was part of Shakespeare's intention, but it certainly didn't feel as if everything was well at the end.

Shakespeare has not yet disappointed me. I found one of his plays to be infuriating, others ridiculous, but I've not disliked any single one of them. I hope this continues like this.


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