All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

INTRODUCTION
“HE WEARS HIS HONOUR IN A BOX UNSEEN”
    All’s Well That Ends Well
is one of Shakespeare’s least performed and least loved comedies. It is also one of his most fascinating and intriguingly modern works. The play presents a battlefield of opposing value systems: abstract codes jostle against material commodities, words are undermined by actions, generation argues with generation, and a sex war rages.
    The language of sexual relations is persistently intermingled with that of warfare. The key word, deployed with equal force in conversations about the bedroom, the court, and the battlefield, is “honour.” The atmosphere feels very different from that of Shakespeare’s comic green world.
All’s Well
shares the darker view of human nature and the more troubling preoccupations of three other plays written at the end of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign and the beginning of James I’s:
Troilus and Cressida, Othello
, and
Measure for Measure
.
    In the very first scene, virginity is described by Parolles as woman’s weapon of resistance. But man will besiege it, “undermine” it, and “blow up” his foe—make her pregnant. Like honor, virginity may variously be seen as a mystical treasure, a mark of integrity, a marketable commodity, and a kind of nothing. Traditional wisdom suggests that it is something a girl must preserve with care. But the play is full of proverbs and moral maxims that are found wanting, “undermined” by the demands of the body. Lavatch, Shakespeare’s most cynical and lascivious fool, is on hand to remind us of this. “I am driven on by the flesh,” he remarks, suggesting that the story of the sexes boils down to “Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger.” “Tib” was a generic name for a whore; the “rush” is a rudimentary wedding ring fashioned from reeds, but a woman’s “ring” is also the place where she is penetrated by a man’s nether finger.
    â€œWar,” says Bertram, “is no strife / To the dark house and the detested wife.” For a young man in search of action, a wife is but a “clog,” a block of wood tied to an animal to prevent it from escaping. Parolles voices the same sentiment in the tumble of language that is his hallmark:
    â€…… To th’wars, my boy, to th’wars!
    He wears his honour in a box unseen
    That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,
    Spending his manly marrow in her arms,
    Which should sustain the bound and high curvet
    Of Mars’ fiery steed. To other regions,
    France is a stable, we that dwell in’t jades:
    Therefore, to th’war!
    â€œKicky-wicky” is an abusive term for a wife, the “box unseen” is the vagina, and “marrow” is the essence of manliness (according to ancient physiology, semen was distilled from the marrow in the backbone). A proper man, Parolles suggests, should be off riding a “fiery steed” into battle, in the spirit of Mars, god of war; those who stay at home are no better than female horses, good only for breeding and sexual indulgence (“jade” was another slang term for whore).
    All’s Well
is in the mainstream of comedy insofar as it is about young people and the process of growing up. Bertram is like most young men of every era: he wants to be one of the boys, to prove his manhood. Enlistment in the army provides the ideal opportunity. He wants to sow some wild oats along the way, but is not ready for marriage. Critics hate him for not loving the lovely humble Helen from the start. “I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram,” wrote Dr. Johnson with characteristic candor and forthrightness, “a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helen as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged,