All's Well That Ends Well/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • Productions that want the play to have a real happy ending try hard to make Bertram come across as a likable but callow youth who needs to learn some valuable lessons in life rather than a shallow Jerkass who clearly isn't good enough for Helena, usually by casting a really, really handsome and charismatic actor in his role, and playing up Parolles as a bad influence. It doesn't always work.
    • Since Helena's determined affection for a total loser with no redeeming qualities who hates her guts is so inexplicable, there's also some debate on whether to portray her as the nice, sensible if lovestruck girl she mostly seems to be, or as some kind of slightly unhinged Love Freak or Yandere.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: The play seems to be a comedy, so some commentators have argued that the finale -- where the lovely, sweet and clever Helena has succeeded in marrying Bertram, an utter tool who hated her guts for most of the play -- must have been intended to be seen as happy. Somehow.
    • Lampshaded, in some productions, by the way one of the King's final lines is delivered:

King: (uncertainly) All yet seems well...