All’s Well That Ends Well: A Promise in Writing

Writing to Cecil from Paris on 24 April 1600, Henry Neville reported that Henri IV had promised:

in writing under his hand unto Mademoiselle d’Entragues, to marry her if she proved with child within six months after he enjoyed her.¹

Henri was preparing to marry Marie de’ Medici and wanted his written promise to Henriette d’Entragues back. She retained it, Neville explained:

for the justification of her honour; that it might appear, she yielded not to him upon any base or dishonest consideration, but upon such a direct promise of marriage.¹

Henri’s own letter to d’Entragues, dated 21 April 1600 and surviving in a manuscript copy, confirms his demand for the return of the written promise.² Neville reports that she eventually surrendered it in exchange for financial provision.¹

The fuller promise printed in Henri’s collected correspondence required her to become pregnant within six months and subsequently give birth to a son. The six-month deadline concerned conception, not the birth.¹

In All’s Well That Ends Well, a written condition concerning a child likewise stands between Helen and Bertram’s acceptance of their marriage. Helen has cured the King of France, who requires Bertram to marry her. After the marriage, Bertram refuses to live with her and leaves for Florence. He sends her a letter setting conditions he believes impossible to fulfil (All’s Well That Ends Well, 3.2):

HELEN
Look on his letter, madam; here’s my passport.
[She reads.] When thou canst get the ring upon
my finger, which never shall come off, and show me
a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then
call me husband. But in such a “then” I write a
“never.”³

The main narrative source is Boccaccio’s story of Giletta of Narbonne in the Decameron (III.9); William Painter’s English retelling in The Palace of Pleasure is a possible source as well. But the letter is Shakespeare’s addition.

In Boccaccio’s tale, Giletta sends two knights to tell her husband that, if he is staying away because of her, she will leave. He answers with his conditions, and they return to report them. Painter preserves this exchange. Shakespeare keeps the messengers but adds a letter for them to carry: the husband’s answer now exists in his own writing, which Helen can later produce as proof before the King of France.⁴

What Shakespeare changes

The ring and the wife’s substitution for another woman are inherited; Shakespeare changes how she proves her claim.⁴ The third column sets Neville’s report beside these changes.¹

In the play’s final scene, Helen produces Bertram’s letter before the king (All’s Well That Ends Well, 5.3):

HELEN
O, my good lord, when I was like this maid,
I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring,
And, look you, here’s your letter. [She takes out a
paper.] This it says:
When from my finger you can get this ring
And are by me with child, etc. This is done.
Will you be mine now you are doubly won?⁵

Helen does not bring a baby to this scene: she says she is pregnant. When she reads Bertram’s letter back to him, its original demand to “show me a child” becomes “are by me with child.” Shakespeare thus replaces the source tale’s two sons with a claim of pregnancy, expressed in the same terms as Neville’s report of Henri’s promise: “if she proved with child.”¹,⁵

Marseilles

Neville’s April dispatch also reports that Marie de’ Medici was expected to pass through Marseilles on her way from Italy to marry Henri. In All’s Well 4.4, Helen learns that the King of France is in Marseilles and goes to find him. Her journey to find the king at Marseilles is absent from both Boccaccio’s tale and Painter’s retelling.⁶,⁷