The old Count of Rossillion has died and his son Bertram must leave his family home for the unfamiliar surroundings of the Parisian court. His mother, newly bereft of her husband, must now accept the departure of her only child. Meanwhile, at the court, the King is grievously ill and the entire medical profession has abandoned all hopes of a cure. This is a world in which death looms large, yet these inauspicious surroundings contain the seed of a future – the possibility of love.
The old Count employed a renowned physician to look after his health and this physician’s daughter, Helen, has lived at Rossillion since she was a child. She too starts the play in a position of suffering. Her mother passed away many years ago, her father died some six months since and now the young man she loves, Bertram, is leaving for Paris knowing nothing of how she feels. We could forgive her if she allowed herself to wallow in self-pity, but instead her love becomes the motive force that drives the whole play.
It has often been remarked that there is a fairy tale quality to some of the plotting of “All’s Well That Ends Well”, but Helen’s love is no fairy tale emotion. It is the real thing – messy, painful and, ultimately, thoroughly life-affirming. Her youth is both her great strength, because it allows her to be optimistic, and her great limitation, because initially she cannot see what it really takes to win the love she so desires.
The object of her affections, Bertram, has his own lessons to learn. The shadow of his father drives him to make his own name for himself, but he does not understand that honour is not a question of breeding and is not something that can only be won on the battlefield. He cannot see clearly that a childhood companion could be his opportunity for true happiness. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes.
And so the stage is set for a tale that sweeps from the grandeurs of the Parisian court to war in Florence, swinging from moments of heartbreak to scenes bordering on farce. There is dancing, bragging, fooling and celebrating. Friendships are forged and undermined; loves are lost and fought for; reputations are made and destroyed.
At the grand, mythic level it is a play that, starting with death, launches its protagonists from their idyllic home and descends metaphorically and literally into darkness before reaching a resolution in which the characters can find some redemption, a second chance, an opportunity to make all well. It’s a resolution which requires them to accept their own failings and forgive those of others, for this is primarily a play of real, complex individuals struggling to make the best of their lives. They stumble. They fall. But we understand them and, hopefully, love them all the more for it.
“All’s Well That Ends Well” says the title, yet at the end we know that this is not a simple story of happy ever after. We feel that the characters’ lives will continue after we have left and, whilst we wish them well, we are not quite sure how they will fare. We can only hope that, at the end of our performance, all will have been played well enough to do those characters justice and that, if you come and see it, you too will see the beauty of this great play.
We present our production on the 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th July, in Hampstead Parish Church. Full details will appear in next month’s magazine and on posters around the church.
Hampstead Players Summer Production
Matthew Williams