Bertram is the hero of the play. Forced to marry Helena against his will, he flees from her, but is tricked into sleeping with her unknowingly, and in the last moments of the play accepts her as his wife. When the play opens, Bertram is off to join the king's court at Paris, where he will presumably put the finishing touches on his education as a courtly gentleman. Bertram is hardly an ideal gentleman: he is at best, as his mother says, "an unseason'd courtier" (I.i.71). The first indication of Bertram's character comes when we encounter the company he keeps: the lewd and parasitic courtier Parolles, who banters with Helena on the topic of her sexual experience ( I.i.99). Then, soon after his arrival in France, Bertram grows petulant because.....
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