SOURCE: “Marriage as Destiny: An Essay on All's Well That Ends Well,” in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring, 1975, pp. 344-59.

In the following essay, Hill explores how familial relations and marriage eventually enable Bertram to assume his proper role within the comic plot of All's Well That Ends Well.

Shakespeare's plays persistently treat familial relationships. Neither Jonson's nor Marlowe's do, except incidentally, and from the perspective of Shakespeare, their avoidance is odd. The only characters in The Alchemist who are related to one another in ways prior to the gullings that summon all to the house of Lovewit are Kastril and Dame Pliant, and their relation as brother and sister remains essentially unexplored. The isolation of Faustus is defined by a lack of familial ties: he is a man without parents, siblings, spouse, or children—everyman, yes, but no man, too. By contrast, Webster's Duchess of Malfi...