WS ABC - The Two Helenas

Apologies to all who follow this blog for having to wait for over a week for this latest entry, but I was indisposed with a heavy cold and not feeling very inspired as a result.

MY FRIEND , Mr. SHAKESPEARE OBVIOUSLY LIKES THE NAME HELENA FOR HIS LADY CHARACTERS, well, for at least for two of them. There is a Helena in All's Well That Ends Well and another in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. And if that's not enough, there is a HELEN who plays a minor role in Cymbeline, the lady who attends on Imogen and another HELEN in Troilus and Cressida. This last one is the daughter of Zeus and Leda. And to top it all, the son of Priam the Priest in Troilus is called HELENUS.

                            Frances Savidge playing Helena

However, today I'm just going to deal with the two lady Helenas. First, the Helena who appears in All's Well That Ends Well.

This Helena, " a sweet disaster" and "the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever Nature had praise for creating" is the orphan daughter of a famous doctor and is now the gentle-woman under the protection of the Countess of Rousillon. She goes to Paris to cure the sick king and soon becomes involved with Bertram, an allegedly charming youth. He unwillingly accepts her but soon abandons her, leaving her with a cruel letter. 

Katherine Kingsley as Helena, complete with ring and a lovely smile

As a result, she leaves Rousillon and disguised as a pilgrim, goes to Florence. There she sees Bertram who is now in love with Diana Capilet and persuades Diana's widowed mother to allow her (Helena) to slip into Bertram's bed instead of Diana. This is because that Bertram had told her in the past that he would only accept her if she could get a ring from his finger and conceive his child. The obviously myopic and insensitive Bertram does not know that he has slept with Helena instead of Diana but in the end, he accepts the pregnant Helena to be his wife when she produces his ring.

                       Helena as a pilgrim by John Wright

In my humble opinion, Helena sounds like a bit of a softie, to put it mildly, even though Coleridge thought that she was WS's "loveliest creature" and Hazlitt showered much praise on her as a " virgin and a wife: yet the most scrupulous nicety of female modesty is not once violated." (Thought: then how did she become pregnant?)

                             Helena in an Indian production

To me, who is often very unimpressed with the plots of our William's Comedies, this one seems a bit far-fetched, nay, incredible, especially if the nasty Bertram is not aware of the lady who is lying between the sheets with him is. I also think that our Helena is a bit soft in the head to still pine after him once she has received such a horribly harsh letter. However, Peter Quennel and Hamish Johnson in Who's Who in Shakespeare claim that Helena is not insipid as it is "the intensity of her passion for Bertram [that] is the mainspring of the play."

In contrast to the aforementioned Helena, the lady of the same name in A Midsummer Night's Dream is also love-struck, but this time with Demetrius, who in turn is in love with Hermia instead. Like Helena no. 1, our second heroine follows Demetrius, but this time into a magic wood and using Puck's misplaced magic, Helena ends up with her true love leaving Hermia to be united with Lysander.

Again, I am forced to say that I find this story-line a bit thin, even though MND has become one of the most popular plays that the Bard ever wrote. It is always being performed somewhere and it has been made into a film at least three times in 1935, 1968 and 1999. In the 1968 version, a very scantily clad Judy Dench appears as the Titania, the Fairy Queen, and Diana Rigg plays the lovelorn Helena.

Next time: Henry V
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(Left) Diana Rig as Helena
(Below) Judi Dench as Titania in    'MND'   ;