All Well that Ends Well Critique - Essay Example

The setting of the play comprises wider areas namely Roussillon, Paris, and Florence in Italy. Their desire for Helena becomes true, irrespective of her low social position. The success of Helena in turning the king of France caused a turning point that helped her a great deal in attaining her dreams. Bertram’s attempt to seduce Diana was well abolished by Helena and trickily she makes a union with him in the bed scene and conceives his child. Moreover, she had asked Diana to get a family ring of Bertram. Helena in the play achieves both conditions of Bertram to become his wife in a tricky way. In the end, when Bertram sees his wife’s great attempts to win him over, makes him attached to Helena, and thus the play ends well as with the title.

The play is not much attached to the unities like the unity of place and the unity of time as Aristotle propounded. But it has made some achievements with the unity of action. It can be seen that the Aristotelian logic of the action, as rebuilt by Frye is well established in the play. According to Aristotle, it should have a “proper beginning, middle, and end” (Kitano). In ‘All Well that Ends Well’ Frye finds the “material cause“ of the comedy in the young man’s sexual desire and the “final cause” in “the audience, which is expected by its applause to take part in the comic resolution” (Haley, 19). All Well that Ends Well has gone through these levels according to Aristotle’s theory. The first level is Exposition where a situation is made with some tensions. Here in the play, the initial conflicts between Helena and Bertram make this level. The second point, Rising action is made when the marriage ends in turmoil. The third level, conflict takes into play the trick played by Helena with Bertram in Florence. This becomes a turning point in the play. The next stage is the falling action. Here things begin to clear up. Everything moves for the final culmination. But in the play, the author has succeeded to implement some sort of tension in the hero. The play ends with happy knots of both the hero and the heroine, thus concluding. All problems are solved and the audience sees the happy ending. Thus the play achieves comic catharsis according to Aristotle’s theories. So in some aspects, the play acts in tune with Aristotle’s rules on comedy.