All's Well That Ends Well

We'll be reading from an online text that MIT (the great university in Cambridge, Mass.) provides. Click here to find the text.

For tomorrow's class, read all of Scene 1. This scene breaks down roughly into:
1) a beginning section where we learn the basic situation of the play (We learn about who the COUNTESS of Rousillon is, and what her situation is, we learn about her son, BERTAM . We're also introduced to HELENA.
2) After BERTRAM and the COUNTESS leave, HELENA has an important soliloquy (a speech the actor makes to himself or herself on the stage -- it's as if we're hearing the character's thoughts). We learn something very important about HELENA.
3)Then a character named PAROLLES enters, and he and HELENA go through a long bantering conversation in which he tells her she shouldn't care about preserving her virginity, and she says she should. What arguments do both make?
4) There's then a section in which HELENA makes fun of PAROLLES' reputation as a soldier.
5) The scene ends with another brief soliloquy by HELENA.