Good morning everyone, thanks for coming back.

This is a series of lectures on Shakespeare plays which tries to take one question to think about a particular play from different angles.

Today I'm going to be talking about all's well that ends well.

I'm going to suggest that this play has set its question already, is all as well, that ends well,

and so that's what this play is about. And to do that, I'm going to think about structure, tones and genre,

and maybe to try and think about a more ethical context for thinking about this troubling comedy.

Like the other 28 lectures so far on plays in this series, this is going to end up on iTunes U.

So let's start with an outline of what happens in this play.

Helen or Helena is the daughter of a doctor who has recently died.

She's in love with her social superior, Bertram, the Count of Roussion.

His father has also just died, and that's made him a ward of the king.

Bertram's mother, the countess, is very keen that the pair should marry, but Bertram, crucially, is not. When Helen uses some of her dad's

old prescriptions to cure the king's illness, she asks him for a reward to be so Bertram to her

as husband. Bertram is horrified, he leaves court for the wars and leaves behind a letter saying

he will not recognise his marriage to Helen until she can prove that she has the ring from his finger

and is pregnant with his child.

Helen is undeterred. Under cover of going to Santiago de Compostella on pilgrimage

she follows Bertram and learns that he is about to seduce Diana she

arranges with Diana's mother the widow that unbeknownst to Bertram she will

substitute herself for him for her no for Diana, that's right, in the bed trick.

It would be a more interesting bed trick perhaps as she was going to substitute for Bertram,

but she isn't. She's going to substitute for Diana. Diana arranges this assignation with Bertram

...