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Journal of Katherine Mansfield

All's Well that Ends Well

All's Well that Ends Well.

The First Lord is worth attending to. One could have thought that his speeches and those of the Second Lord would have been interchangeable; but he is a very definite, quick-cut character. Take, for example, the talk between the two in Act IV Scene III. The Second Lord asks him to let what he is going to tell dwell darkly with him.

First Lord: ‘When you have spoken it, 'tis dead, and I am the grave of it.’

And then his comment:

‘How mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our losses.’

And this is most excellent:

‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our faults would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.’

I like the temper of that extremely—and does it not reveal the man? Disillusioned and yet—amused—worldly, and yet he has feeling. But I see him as—quick, full of Life, and marvellously at his ease with his company, his surroundings, his own condition, and the whole small, solid earth. He is like a man on shipboard who is inclined to straddle just to show (but not to show off) how well his sea-legs serve him….

The Clown —“a shrewd knave and an unhappy”—comes to tell the Countess of the arrival of Bertram and his soldiers.

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‘Faith, there's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, that bow and nod the head at every man.’

In that phrase there is all the charm of soldiers on prancing, jingling, dancing horses. It is a veritable little pageant. With what an air the haughty (and intolerable) Bertram wears his two-pile velvet patch—with what disdain his hand in the white laced French glove tightens upon the tight rein of his silver charger. Wonderfully sunny, with a little breeze. And the Clown, of course, sees the humour of this conceit….

Parolles is a lovable creature, a brave little cock-sparrow of a ruffian.

… ‘I am now, sir, muddied in Fortune's mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure.’

I must say Helena is a terrifying female. Her virtue, her persistence, her pegging away after the odious Bertram (and disguised as a pilgrim—so typical!) and then telling the whole story to that good widow-woman! And that tame fish Diana. As to lying in Diana's bed and enjoying the embraces meant for Diana—well, I know nothing more sickening. It would take a respectable woman to do such a thing. The worst of it is I can so well imagine … for instance acting in precisely that way, and giving Diana a present afterwards. What a cup of tea the widow and D. must have enjoyed while it was taking place, or did D. at the last moment want to cry off the bargain? But to forgive such a woman! Yet Bertram would. There's an espèce de mothers- page 201 boyisme in him which makes him stupid enough for anything.

The Old King is a queer old card—he seems to have a mania for bestowing husbands. As if the one fiasco were not enough, Diana has no sooner explained herself than he begins:

“If thou be'st yet a fresh uncropped flower
Choose thou thy husband, and I'll pay thy dower.”

I think Shakespeare must have seen the humour of that. It just—at the very last moment of the play, puts breath into the old fool.