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Bertram is a young nobleman who has recently inherited the title of Count of Rossillion from his late father. However, despite taking on his father’s title, Bertram has not inherited his father’s wealth and property. Because of this, he’s shipped off to become a ward to the King of France, an event that effectively arrests his entrance into adulthood and restricts his sense of masculinity. The implication of immaturity that hovers over Bertram at the play’s beginning becomes more pronounced when he publicly rejects Helen as a wife, citing her lowborn status. Clearly, Bertram cannot see what everyone else sees in Helen: a beautiful and well-spoken woman who carries herself with an innate nobility of spirit. This failure of perception finds a parallel later in the play, when it becomes clear that Bertram is also the only person who fails to see that Parolles is a liar and a coward. In addition to his skewed perspective on other people, Bertram also lacks self-awareness. For someone who prides himself on being part of the upper class, he often doesn’t act very nobly. He treats Helen dismissively, he tries to coerce Diana into having sex with him, and he ends the play lying to the King of France.
Thus, despite being a handsome young man and an eager soldier, Bertram is also careless and immature. In this regard, although he closely resembles his father in physical appearance, he lacks the character and honor that other characters celebrate about the previous Count of Rossillion. Before Bertram can become his father’s true heir, he needs to grow up. However, what is curious about Bertram’s arc in All’s Well That Ends Well is that he never seems to mature. His story ends with the King of France catching him in a lie about the ring he’s wearing, followed by Helen’s reappearance and her triumphant confirmation that she’s fulfilled his two seemingly impossible conditions for marriage. In the final moments of the play, then, Bertram is publicly chastened and forced to submit to a marriage he’s never wanted. This ending has felt unsatisfying to many generations of audiences and critics, who find that Bertram is never sufficiently redeemed or rehabilitated. Yet it’s possible that Shakespeare intended the audience to feel ambivalent about the ending. If Bertram is to grow up, he apparently needs to be forced into it. In this way, social conventions like marriage can have a coercive and even oppressive edge.
