All's Well That Ends Well

“HELEN. Man is enemy to virginity. How may we barricade it against him?

PAROLLES. Keep him out.

HELEN. But he assails, and our virginity, though valiant in the defense, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance.

PAROLLES. There is none. Man setting down before you will undermine you and blow you up.

HELEN. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up! Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?

PAROLLES. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up. Marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made you lose your city.”

This discussion between Helen and Parolles frames the issue of virginity as a matter of women being assailed by men who want to take their virginity. However, Helen reframes that discussion, playing on the double meaning of “blowing up” as taking virginity or physically attacking someone. In one meaning, Helen asks how to physically stop men from taking her virginity, while, in the other, she asks how she might assault a man’s virginity, an ironic expression of her sexual interest in Bertram. Parolles’s response highlights the double standard in which, even if Helen takes an active role in taking a man’s virginity, she loses her own “city”: i.e., the virginity she loses is worth more than the virginity she takes because women are held to a different standard of virtue.

“So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness

Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,

His equal had awaked them, and his honor,

Clock to itself, knew the true minute when

Exception bid him speak, and at this time

His tongue obeyed his hand. Who were below him

He used as creatures of another place

And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,

Making them proud of his humility,

In their poor praise he humbled.”

The King’s memory of Bertram’s father, the Count of Rossillion, reflects his good manners and positive character. The key element in this quote is that the Count followed his words with actions and respected those of the lower classes. Explicitly, the King’s speech argues that Bertram may not avoid Helen because of her class. Implicitly, it establishes the morals that the noble Bertram should uphold but that, the play will show, he fails to.