Shakespeare’s mothers are often nasty. Lady Capulet ignores, then disowns, poor Juliet. Lady Macbeth would kill her child to gain a throne. Though they grieve (Constance in King John) it is vicious grief (Queen Margaret in Richard III). Sometimes they are terrifying: Volumnia raised Coriolanus to be a tyrant; Tamora encourages her son to commit rape in Titus Andronicus. Often, there are no mothers. O! Cordelia, Katherine, Miranda, Jessica — think how they need their mother’s love! Many are minor. Aemilia in A Comedy of Errors appears at the end, a resolution. The blameless Lady Macduff appears only to be hauntingly killed, a brief symbol of innocence in a darkening world. There is a wicked step-mother (Cymbeline), a jealous step-mother (Pericles), a weak-willed mother (Hamlet). It is almost incidental that Mistress Page (The Merry Wives of Windsor) is a mother; Cleopatra, too. Only Hermione’s strong innocence in A Winter’s Tale makes her rightfully beloved. Hermione has a splendid precursor, the Countess of Rousillion, from All’s Well That Ends Well. This play is unjustly unloved, and the Countess gets less attention than she deserves. She is among Shakespeare’s most fascinating characters, and is his most wonderful mother. All’s Well That Ends Well is an inverted romance in which the woman pursues the man. It is also about inverted families. It is often said that we cannot choose our parents: Shakespeare is interested in the fact that we cannot choose our children. Just as Helena inverts the expectations of a romantic heroine, so the Countess inverts the expectations of a mother, and picks her child. Bertram’s father is dead. He is now a ward of the king. His mother the Countess is left in Rousillion with her own ward, Helena, a doctor’s orphan. Helena reveals to the audience that she loves Bertram and plans to go to Paris to cure the king of his fistula (using her father’s remedies) so he will marry her to Bertram. The Countess discovers this, and, knowing Bertram is a hopeless boy in whom “blood and virtue contend for empire,” promises Helena her help. The cure works! But Bertram refuses marriage because Helena is low born. The king’s pride forces the wedding. That night, Bertram absconds. Helena returns to the Countess, who is doubly distressed that Bertram has disobeyed the king and treated Helena badly. Bertram said he will have “Nothing in France” until he has no wife. So Helena, distressed that Bertram has gone to war, runs away so that he may return. Hearing that Helena has gone on pilgrimage, the Countess is heartbroken. When Helena told her Bertram absconded, the Countess replied: “I do wash his name out of my blood, / And thou art all my child.” On her travels, Helena discovers that she is in the same town as Bertram, where he is wooing a virgin. When he left, Bertram told Helena they would be together if she got the ring from his finger and was pregnant with his child. Helena tells the virgin, Diana, and Diana’s mother, that she will provide them with a dowry if they help her. Diana bids Bertram come to her, give her his ring, and she will sleep with him. At the crucial moment, Helena takes Diana’s place (the “bed trick”). Diana also gives Bertram a ring of Helena’s, which exposes him later on at court as a liar, rogue, and cad. Then Helena returns with his ring and baby. And all’s well that ends well. The plot comes from Boccaccio, via a translation. The Countess is Shakespeare’s. Without her, the story would play differently. Helena is not, as some have said, predatory. She is guided and approved of by the Countess. The play does not condemn her; the Countess shows us she is to be understood, not feared. Helena is one of Shakespeare’s great experiments. She inverts the expectations of her sex without losing her virtuous character nor destroying the basic plot of a romantic comedy, but with some of the most daring challenges to the form in the whole Shakespeare canon. She is matched in this by her adoptive mother. When the countess discovers that Helena loves Bertram she has no class pride, but feels great sympathy. Even so it was with me when I was young: If ever we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong Helena appears and the Countess says “You know, Helen, / I am a mother to you.” Helena quibbles. “Mine honourable mistress.” The Countess replies, not in her usual mellifluous lines, but in broken speech. Nay, a mother: Why not a mother? When I said “a mother,” Methought you saw a serpent: what’s in “mother,” That you start at it? I say, I am your mother Helena’s speech is characterized by caesura. She has a verse of deliberation, uncertainty, thinking. The Countess mirrors this to draw Helena out, rather than confront her. She even slips in the prospect of marriage, Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law: God shield you mean it not! daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse. What, pale again? My fear hath catch’d your fondness As the scene reaches breaking point, Helena is overwhelmed and confesses her love on her knees, saying “My friends were poor, but honest; so’s my love”; begging the Countess, “Let not your hate encounter with my love.” Were this a scene between father and daughter, it would turn vicious. “Out baggage!” screams Lord Capulet. Polonius demands demure obedience of Ophelia. Lear rages at Cordelia, Brabantio at Desdemona. Not the Countess. She tests Helena’s plan to cure the king (“how shall they credit / A poor unlearned virgin”) and, satisfied of her mettle, tells her: Be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this, What I can help thee to thou shalt not miss. It is a very fine moment. The Countess knows Bertram lacks the sense and virtue Helena exemplifies. She tried to advise him when he left for court, but added
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