play opens with a group of people dressed in mourning onstage. The first to speak is the Countess of Rousillon, who has recently lost her husband (hence the mourning). She has fresh cause for sorrow, too, and says:
In delivering my son from me
I bury a second husband.
- Act I, scene i, lines 1-2
What's happening is that her son, Bertram, the young Count of Rousillon, is going to Paris to be brought up at the court of the King of France and his mother hates to part with him.
Rousillon is treated in this play as part of France, and indeed (as Rous-sillon-the French use two s's), so it is-today. It is located just north of the Pyrenees at their eastern edge adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea. Its chief city is Perpignan.
Through much of its history, however, it was not part of France. While the Pyrenees are the general boundary between France and Spain, Rousillon was, from 1172 on, part of the kingdom of Aragon (see page I-526), located just south of the mountains.
It was not till 1450 that France was sufficiently united and sufficiently free of the English menace (see page II-562) to turn its attention to the spread of Spanish power across the mountain range. King Louis XI of France (see page II-651) sent expeditions southward and Rousillon became French in 1465. In 1493, however, Louis' son, Charles VIII, more interested in invading Italy, handed Rousillon back to Aragon to win Aragonese good will for his venture.
By that time Aragon had formed a union with Castile, and modern Spain had taken shape. Spain was at the height of its power then and held on to Rousillon till 1659, at which time it became permanently French.
Thus, when All's Well That Ends Well was written, Rousillon was Spanish, not French. Shakespeare obtained his plot from one of the tales in the Decameron by Boccaccio, which dealt with Beltram of Rossiglione. But the Decameron was published in 1353 and at that time Rossiglione (which, presumably, is Rousillon) was Aragonese, not French, and yet Boccaccio portrayed Beltram as a Frenchman.
Not that it's important, of course, for as far as the play is concerned, Rousillon might have been any other name-an imaginary one, for that matter.
... the King ...
An elderly lord, Lafew, reassures the Countess, saying:
You shall find of the
King a husband, madam; you, sir, a father,
- Act I, scene i, lines 7-8
It is useless to try to find out who the King of France is. No actual King of France unmistakably fits the events in the play, and he is not named either in this play or in the Decameron source.
It turns out that the King is suffering from a lingering, chronic disease and that cure is despaired of. One medieval French king who did suffer from a lingering, chronic disease was Charles VI (see page II-464), who reigned from 1380 to 1422 and was mentally ill most of the time. There is no other comparison, however, and we might as well accept the fact that the King, as well as everything else in the play, is fictional.
... Gerard de Narbon
The Countess regrets the death of a physician so skilled that he might surely have cured the King. She tells Lafew:
He was famous sir, in his profession,
and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.
- Act I, scene i, lines 28-29
He was, in other words, of the city of Narbonne, and this, at least, fits well geographically. Narbonne is located some thirty miles north of Per-pignan.
... but Bertram's
Gerard de Narbon has left behind a beautiful and virtuous daughter, who is in the Countess' care. When all leave the stage, she remains and says:
... my imagination Carries no favor in't
but Bertram's. I am undone; there is
no living, none, If Bertram be away...
- Act I, scene i, lines 88-91
This is the major complication of the play. Helena, the doctor's daughter, loves Bertram, the young Count of Rousillon, and therefore loves "above her station." The doctor, however skilled, is of menial position, while Bertram is, of course, a nobleman.
... a notorious liar
Helena's soliloquy is interrupted by the entrance of Parolles, Bertram's favorite companion. Parolles professes to be a fierce warrior, dresses and talks the part, but does not fool Helena. She says, aside:
I love him [Parolles] for his [Bertram's] sake,
And yet I know him a notorious liar,
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
- Act I, scene i, lines 105-7
As a matter of fact, everyone who meets Parolles sees through him at once