SOURCE: Bergeron, David M. “The Mythical Structure of All's Well That Ends Well.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 14, no. 4 (winter 1973): 559-68.

In the following essay, Bergeron focuses on All's Well That Ends Well's allusions to the tumultuous affair of the classical gods of love and war, Venus and Mars, and associates these figures respectively with Helena and Bertram.

Critics have frequently discussed the symbolic structure of Shakespearean comedy, whether they suggest the pattern of the journey into the “green world,” a structure perfectly realized in A Midsummer Night's Dream, or the ritual structure of reconciliation in the late romances. Though the approaches to the structure of All's Well that Ends Well have been richly varied,¹ I find in the play a symbolic structure that has gone largely unnoticed. Through both language and action Shakespeare endows this play with a mythical structure representing the story of Mars...