About the work
Comedy by William Shakespeare, classed by scholars as a "problem play" and probably written around 1601–1603 on stylistic grounds; no performance during the author's lifetime is documented, and the earliest known revival dates only from 1741. The text was first printed in the First Folio of 1623, apparently from an unfinished draft.
Plot
The orphaned physician's daughter Helena cures the dying King of France and is allowed to choose a husband in reward; she picks Count Bertram, who despises the match and flees to Italy at once. Helena secretly follows him and, disguised as the woman he desires, Diana, fulfils in his own bed the seemingly impossible conditions he had set for accepting the marriage. In the end Bertram acknowledges Helena as his wife.
Cultural significance
The play is among Shakespeare's least performed works and was long dismissed as a failure; since the twentieth century it has drawn renewed interest, not least for its ambivalent heroine Helena. Its plot derives from a tale in Boccaccio's Decameron.