Performance, Parallels, and Restoration in Mona Awad’s All’s Well

All’s Well, That Ends Well has, historically, been one of Shakespeare's least-appreciated works. In this essay I seek to demonstrate that Awad proposes a redemptive reading which puts the play in discourse with Macbeth; the two plays both concern the desire to, seemingly impossibly, restore what has been lost. While Macbeth, the hero of a tragedy, is a victim of fate, Helena, as the lead in a comedy, performs what seems to be magic, undoing illness and romantic rejection. In the novel of All’s Well, the historical mistreatment of All's Well, That Ends Well parallels the protagonist's mistreatment at the hands of the medical system. The theme of recovery and transformation in All's Well, That Ends Well offers an alternative form of healing and return. The play, both on and off the stage, allows the novel's characters to, like Helena, escape the roles and bodies in which they have been trapped.