SOURCE: Dennis, Carl. “All's Well That Ends Well and the Meaning of Agape.” Philological Quarterly 50, no. 1 (January 1971): 75-84.

In the following essay, Dennis discusses the religious themes of fidelity and divine love in All's Well That Ends Well.

Dr. Johnson's criticism of All's Well that Ends Well has never been effectively answered. Its hero, Bertram, is too fault-ridden to attract the reader's sympathies, and his final good fortune in getting back the good wife he unjustly spurns seems grossly unmerited. Bertram, as Dr. Johnson writes, is “a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate; when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness.”¹ And where Bertram repels us by his faults, Helena pains...