There is no evidence that "All's Well That Ends Well" was popular in Shakespeare's own lifetime and it has remained one of his lesser-known plays ever since, in part due to its unorthodox mixture of fairy tale logic, gender role reversals and cynical realism. Helena's love for the seemingly unlovable Bertram is difficult to explain on the page, but in performance, it can be made acceptable by casting an extremely attractive actor and emphasising the obvious homosexual relationship between Bertram and the "clothes horse" fop, Parolles: "A filthy officer he is in those suggestions for the