Helena: Love, Ambition and the Bed-Trick
First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
Helena is a physician's daughter who cures a king and demands a count as her reward. Her social position is far below Bertram's, and she knows it. She calls him 'a bright particular star' she cannot reach, yet she reaches for him anyway.
She is the most capable person in the play. She saves the King of France when his own doctors have given up. She engineers the bed-trick that fulfils Bertram's impossible conditions. Every obstacle the plot throws at her, she solves.
Whether the marriage she ends up with is worth having is left unresolved. Bertram only accepts her under pressure, not out of love. Shakespeare gives the play a happy ending in name but not quite in feeling.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.”
Helena — Act 1, Scene 1
“I am undone: there is no living, none, If Bertram be away.”
Helena — Act 1, Scene 1
Themes
Other Characters in All's Well That Ends Well
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