All's Well That Ends Well and the Morality Play

Abstract

HAT elements of the Morality Play frequently appear in the more sophisticated drama of the late Renaissance a fact that has not been seriously questioned by literary historians. Implicitly basing their comments on this survival of Morality elements in later drama, critics have suggested, during the last few decades, that All's Well That Ends Well reveals an underlying Morality structure in which Bertram, as the figure of Everyman, stands between the opposing forces of Helena and Parolles. Representing Virtue, Helena draws him toward creativity and unity in marriage, while Parolles, the Vice, lures Bertram to the Italian Wars and the division and destruction they symbolize. In the end, Bertram rejects the Vice and led by Helena to see his errors in judgment. Described in this manner, the structure of All's Well reminds us strongly of such early Morality Plays as Mankind and Everyman.1 weakness of this design, Jonas Barish suggests, is that too much of it remains blueprint. Bertram's progress diagramed rather than fully realized poetically, assumed rather than demonstrated. Upon closer examination, however, the Morality pattern of All's Well seems to be far different from the fifteenth-century Morality structure that Barish sees behind the action. Of course, some differences are only to be expected. There were complex developments in the Late Morality as it grew more and more secular in nature. The Protestant Moralities, as these later plays are sometimes called, became less interested in metaphysical problems and began to investigate other themes, chiefly, the importance of nurture and breeding, and the evils of social corruption.3 Concomitantly, the Vice figure, from the beginning inherently comic, developed into such characters as Ambidexter and Shift. Since the Morality Tradition was not static, we may legitimately expect All's Well to be different from Everyman. Nevertheless, the Morality Tradition seems to have had a common ethical