- All's Well That Ends Well
Much of the critical work on All's Well That Ends Well falls into two main categories: examining the play as a "problem comedy," and exploring its links with folklore. The play has often been classed with Measure For Measure and Troilus and Cressida as thematically difficult, poised uneasily between comedy and tragedy. Scholars have also noted how Shakespeare both uses and subverts fairy-tale traditions in his portrayal of a young, lower-class woman's quest to win the hand of a wealthy count. Marianne Elliott's National Theatre production accomplished the difficult feat of fully realizing both aspects of the play, both its generic complexities, and its folkloric themes. The set-design created an atmosphere at once bleakly tragic and brightly comic, while the direction and characterizations focused heavily on the play's problematic gender issues. The production also incorporated highly inventive animated projections that, along with some of the costume design, linked the play to the world of fairy tales.
It was immediately apparent upon entering the Olivier Theatre that this production would interrogate the categorization of the play as a comedy. The stage depicted a cold and desolate vista, with bare black trees bent under a howling wind, and ragged clouds racing across a gray sky. A staircase, edged with jagged wood, wound around the stage, and an icy mountain rose threateningly in the distance. Rossillion was consistently portrayed as a dark place, with the Countess dressed in a mourning gown and the black-garbed servants standing stiffly and solemnly in the background. The stage brightened somewhat for the scenes in the King's court, with its red velvet carpets and golden chandeliers, and exploded in color for the transition to Florence, where the women wore bright print dresses and drank beer with the victorious soldiers in a garden hung with paper lanterns. These design choices represented the range of the play, from tragedy to comedy and back again. [End Page 614]
Elliott also balanced comedic moments with a realization of the play's psychological complexity. For instance, the forbidding design of the pre-show shifted into an unscripted humorous pantomime for Bertram at the start of the play, in which he played with his sword, pretending to kill an invisible enemy, disemboweling him and cutting off his head. The "bed trick" was also purely comic: Diana and Helena mischievously dressed up in fetish gear as cats, in corsets, stockings, heels, and fluffy ears and tails. Diana giggled throughout, posing enthusiastically on all fours on the bed and teasing the overly excitable Bertram with a feather before blindfolding him. The subplot was similarly played for laughs, with the braggartly Parolles mocked by the outrageous accents of his tormentors.
While all these scenes deliberately elicited laughter from the audience, they also contributed to an understanding of the play's serious side, particularly by linking masculinity, violence, and sexual conquest. Bertram and the other lords were eager to go to war, dashing off impetuously, only to be repeatedly stopped by the doddering, feminized King. These "real men" were contrasted with the cowardly Parolles and the four potential suitors for Helena presented by the King in 2.3, all of whom were nerds: one carried a lacrosse stick, one a chemistry experiment, one a quill and poem, and the last a bunch of flowers. Bertram was equally excited about bedding Diana as he was about going to war: flushed with success after the battle, and pushed over the edge by Diana's fetish gear, he was...