Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

As a matter of fact, everyone who meets Parolles sees through him at once and knows him to be all talk (his very name is related to the French word for "words"). Only Bertram is deceived and takes him for genuine, which seems to be clear evidence that Bertram is rather a fool.

Helena and Parolles engage in conversation and when Helena refers to the star under which he was born, he replies, swaggeringly:

—Act I, scene i, line 199

He claims in this way to have an inborn martial personality (see page I-404). Helena says, dryly, however:

—Act I, scene i, line 203

Mars' path across the sky is generally from west to east against the background of the stars. Periodically, however, it changes direction and moves from east to west. It is then moving backward or "retrograde." The ancient Greeks labored to account for such retrograde motion but it wasn't till Copernicus elaborated the heliocentric view with the sun at the center of the solar system that the situation was made clear. Periodically, the earth in its orbit overtakes Mars and it is then that the planet seems to move backward.

Helena, by use of the term, indicates that if Parolles is born under Mars, he nevertheless moves backward and retreats hastily in battle.

The second scene opens in the King's palace in Paris. The King is involved in statecraft, saying:

—Act I, scene ii, lines 1-3

Florence was the great city of the Italian Renaissance (see page I-448) and the "Senoys" are natives of Siena, a city about thirty miles south of Florence. For centuries Siena and Florence were rivals, and down nearly to Boccaccio's time, the fight remained fairly equal.

Siena, however, was already declining when the Decameron was written and it came more and more under the Florentine shadow. In 1557 Florence finally gained political control of Siena and the latter's history as an independent city-state came to an end.

The King goes on to say:

—Act II, scene i, lines 4-9

Again there is no use in searching history for any specific event that would mirror this.

In the sixteenth century there was a great rivalry between Francis I of France and the Emperor Charles V (see page II-747), the core of whose dominions within the Empire was Austria. Francis and Charles fought over Italy all through their reigns, with Charles having the better of it most of the time.

With this in mind, we can perhaps interpret the King's speech in terms of practical politics as follows. Austria has warned France that if she interferes in Italy and supports Florence, Austria will come to the aid of Siena in order to preserve the balance of power. France then adopts the prudent path of neutrality.

Yet if France cannot openly intervene, there is another method open to her. She can send "volunteers" (a device known to and used by nations in our own times). The King says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 12-14

The region in which Florence and Siena are located was known as Etruria in ancient tunes, and was inhabited by the Etruscans. The regional name was distorted to Tuscany (Toscana in Italian) in the Middle Ages.

Through the Middle Ages Tuscany did not form a separate and united political entity but was broken up among several city-states, of which Florence, Pisa, and Siena were the most important. In 1557, however, with the absorption of Siena, Florence came to be in control of the entire region. Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, was awarded the higher title of Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569 by Pope Pius V. In Shakespeare's time, then, Tuscany was on the map.

And while the court is involved with the Tuscan wars, Helena arrives.

She hopes to cure the King with some of her dead father's remedies and she also hopes to see Bertram. She carries with her the best wishes of the old Countess, who loves the girl and doesn't seem to be disturbed by the thought of a mesalliance.

Lafew is at court to introduce Helena. He asks the King if he wants to be cured, but the King has so often been disappointed that he has given up and answers, crossly, in the negative. Lafew says:

—Act II, scene i, lines 71-72

The reference is, of course, to Aesop's famous fable of the fox who could not reach the grapes and who consoled himself with the thought that he did not want them anyway, since they were probably sour.

Lafew assures the King that he can indeed get the grapes and that there is indeed a cure. He describes the cure as something

—Act II, scene i, lines 77-80

It can raise, in Lafew's hyperbole, the long dead Charlemagne, and his father Pepin (Pippen) the Short (see page II-455).

Lafew then brings in Helena and leaves her with the King, saying as he himself departs:

—Act II, scene i, lines 99-100

Cressid's uncle was Pandarus, who served as go-between for her and Troilus (see page I-79) and was thus the original pander. Lafew's "pandering" is, of course, of quite another kind.

Helena promises the King a quick recovery. In fact, he will be well

—Act II, scene i, lines 165-66

Hesperus (see page I-187) is the evening star. It sets in the western ocean (hence "occidental damp" and "moist") and it sets up to three hours after the sun, so that her light is a "sleepy lamp."

The medicine works precisely as Helena had promised and the King is quickly made well. All, even Lafew, are astonished, since all the other physicians had been utterly helpless. Even the worthless Parolles agrees, saying:

—Act II, scene iii, line 11

Galen was a Greek physician who settled in Rome in 164. He wrote many books on medicine, which were excellent for their time. They survived the fall of ancient civilization and were considered the last word on the subject throughout the Middle Ages.

The first physician to argue strenuously against blind acceptance of Galen and in favor of a new regime of mineral medicines as opposed to the old use of herbs was Theophrastus von Hohenheim, better known by his self-adopted nickname of Paracelsus. He lived from 1493 to 1541 and from Shakespeare's point of view would have been a "modern" physician.

What Parolles is saying, then, is that the King had been given up by all physicians of both the old school and the new.