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.
The King is naturally grateful to Helena and offers her, as a reward, marriage with any of the noblemen at court. She chooses Bertram, who starts back in revulsion and horror at the thought of marrying a lowborn girl.
The King insists, however, and Bertram is forced into marriage. As soon as that is done, however, the young man determines to make it a dead letter. He orders Helena back to Rousillon without taking her to bed or even kissing her.
She goes submissively, and when she arrives, she has only a letter to show Bertram's mother, the Countess. He says he is off to the Tuscan wars and will never return as long as he is burdened with a wife he cannot accept. Nor will he ever accept her until she can produce his ring, which he will not give her, and show him a child begotten by him, for which he will give her no opportunity.
The old Countess is horrified. She is all on Helena's side, as is everyone else in the play (and in the audience) except for Parolles and, of course, Bertram himself.
But Helena begins to put into action a plan of her own. She departs from Rousillon in secret, leaving behind a letter that starts:
—Act III, scene iv, line 4
St. Jaques is James the Apostle, the son of Zebedee. According to a tradition which has no biblical backing whatever, he visited Spain and preached the gospel there. As a result, he is accepted now as the patron saint of Spain. He must, however, have returned to Judea, for the Bible records his death there at the order of Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-2).
Tradition then takes over again and has his dead body miraculously whisked to Spain, where it finally came to rest in a shrine at Compostela, a city in the northwestern corner of Spain, about six hundred miles west of Perpignan. If Helena goes there she is traveling in the direction opposite to that Bertram has taken. She is going west into farthest Spain, he east to Tuscany.
"James" is the English version of a Hebrew name of which "Jacob" is the Old Testament version. In Spanish it is Iago, and St. James is Santiago. The city in which the bones were thought to rest is Santiago de Compostela.
Helena asks the Countess to write and tell Bertram she is gone so that he can come safely home from the wars. She scolds herself, saying:
—Act III, scene iv, lines 12-14
Hercules, who was Jupiter's son by a mortal woman, naturally incurred the wrath of Juno (Hera), who was Jupiter's lawful wife. It was her enmity that visited him with periodic bouts of madness and condemned him to perform twelve labors for an unworthy cousin. Analogously, Helena considers the mere fact of her own existence to be condemning Bertram to warlike labors.
As a matter of fact, though, Helena is not quite as unselfish as she is presenting herself to be. She does not go to the shrine at all but sneaks off to Florence in disguise as a pilgrim, hoping that she may yet win her reluctant husband. There she stops to ask: