All's Well That Ends Well

Well that ends well (English All's Well That Ends Well) is a play by William Shakespeare, whose exact date of composition is uncertain. According to its content it does not fit clearly into the category of comedy and is referred to as a problem play ( problem piece ) and as dark comedy ( dark comedy ). The presentation provided a short story from Boccaccio's Decameron ( Day 3, 9th story).

Action

Helena, the orphaned daughter of a doctor who is the ward of the Countess of Roussillon and has immortalized the young Count Bertram falls in love with their son. But this feels not at all attracted to Helena, who is not on top of that noble. He pursues just one goal: to get to the King of France, to be sent as a soldier in Tuscany. Helena but also makes itself at the court of the king. She says the terminally ill king that she had of her father a remedy by which the king could be cured, and demanded of him in case of success that she gets to choose her groom themselves. Actually succeed Helena, restore the health of the king, and she chooses Bertram as a husband. But this is the idea of not enthusiastic, turns vain one, that Helena was not of his rank and eventually married unwillingly with her.

If Bertram could not avoid the closing of the marriage, so he wants but at least prevent its enforcement. That's why he goes to war. In a letter he writes Helena that he will live as her husband, if she his ring (which he has on his finger ) and bears a child whose father he is. Helena follows Bertram but to Florence, where the attempts to seduce the young Florentine lady Diana. Helena now forges with Diana's mother this plan: Diana should be possible to give Bertram his ring and arrange to meet with him in her bedroom; However, there to wait for him instead of her Helena. In fact, Diana receives against the commitment that Bertram can come in the night in her room, his ring. During his nocturnal adventures Bertram is deceived and sleeps with Helena. Since Bertram has received the message, Helena died in a monastery, he dares back on French soil. In Roussillon but he meets in the presence of the king to Helena, Diana and her mother and the truth is revealed. Helen testified that she had met Bertrams conditions as they wear his ring and a child by him, and Bertram takes on the role of their husbands.