Bertram is a young man fresh from home. He does not want to marry. He is eager to see the world and to win honour. He has been accustomed to look down on Helena as a poor dependant. He does not like her, and he does not like being ordered. He is suddenly ordered to marry her. He has been trapped by a woman's underhand trick. He sees himself brought into bondage with all the plumes of his youth clipped close. There is no way of escape; he has to marry her; but the King's order cannot quench his rage against the woman who has so snared him. His rage burns inward into a brooding, rankling ill-humour that becomes an obsession. It is one of the tragedies of life that an evil obsession blinds the judgment on more sides than one. The obsessed are always without criticism. A way of destruction may be as narrow as a way of virtue; but all the other ways of destruction run into it. Bertram in blinkers to the good in Helena is blind to the faults in himself and in Parolles his friend. Wilfully, as the sullen do, he thinks himself justified in doing evil because evil has been done to him. Hot blood is running in him. Temptation, never far from youth, is always near the unbalanced. He takes an unworthy confidant, as the obsessed do, and goes in over the ears. His sin is the giving of salutation to sportive blood, it is love, it is "natural rebellion," it is young man's pastime. But looked at coldly and judicially, with the nature of the confidant laid bare, and the lies of the sinner made plain, it is an ugly thing. Passion is sweet enough to seem truth, the only truth. Let the eyes be opened a little, and it will blast the heart with horror. What man thought true is then seen to be this, this thing, this devil of falseness who gives man this kind of friend, makes him tell this kind of lie, and brands him with this kind of shame. Shakespeare is just to Bertram. The treachery of a woman is often the cause of a man's treachery to womanhood. Helena's obsession of love makes her blind to the results of her actions. She twice puts the man whom she loves into an intolerable position, which nothing but a king can end. The fantasy is not made so real that we can believe in the possibility of happiness between two so married. Helena has been praised as one of the noblest of Shakespeare's women. Shakespeare saw her more clearly than any man who has ever lived. He saw her as a woman who practises a borrowed art, not for art's sake, nor for charity, but, woman fashion, for a selfish end. He saw her put a man into a position of ignominy quite unbearable, and then plot with other women to keep him in that position. Lastly, he saw her beloved all the time by the conventionally minded of both sexes. The play is full of effective theatrical situations. It contains much fine poetry. Besides the poetry there are startling moments of insight-- "My mother told me just how he would woo As if she sat in's heart...."