Captives of Alls Well That Ends Well

   We can only hope to understand Shakespeare's work in a new way that is wrong. I have decided that is to be my theme for the rest of the semester in this class. I have often been intimidated by my classmates but truly they have no more of an idea what Shakespeare really means than I do. While pondering this sentence in class today, I focused in on the discussion of captious.
   We discussed how this word means to let everything out (sieve) and how it leads one to think about capacious that has unlimited room. However, this word made me think of the word captive. I believe that Helena was not only referring to how the waters of her love go out and stay in her but how she is a prisoner of this love. The love that Helena feels does not appear to be at all enjoyable. It doesn't even feel like a love but more of an obsession. Love is supposed to be giving and wanting the one that you love to have whatever will make them happy. This is not what Helena feels for Bertram. What she feels for him is just a selfish as he is. This is not the only aspect of her personality but it is a dominant feature of her that we get to see as an audience. The interesting thing about this facet of her personality is that she doesn't seem to choose it. In fact she often bemoans her feelings and wants them to go away. She is in all reality a captive of her obsession.
     Not only she is a captive of her feelings but after her marriage she is a captive of her husband. Helena is able to break out of this captivity but most women of the time period this was written in would not have been able to do so. But comparatively to today, Helena is most certainly a captive of her husband's will and decrees. She must do as he says because she has no other choice. She must go home when she is sent there. She does not stay but that doesn't diminish that at certain points she has no choice in the actions she must take. Thus making her a captive to not only her feelings but the role she must play because of her gender. Her husband however does not follow the limits put upon him by his gender roles. He refuses to act the part of a husband.
  One of the reasons that I believe this play has not been popular is because of the reader response that it invokes. Shakespeare has amazing talent of forcing his audience to see parts of themselves within the play. I think that within this play, people may have been able to relate too much to his characters. I am sure that all of us have felt unrequited love like Helena. Hopefully it has not been as obsessive as hers but even a tenth of what she felt would have been painfully horrible and made someone a captive to themselves and their feelings. I also believe that people could relate to the character of Bertram. They may not have been forced into marriage but everyone is forced into doing something that they do not wish to do at some point in their life. Reader response and empathy for characters is good and gives a piece of literature more value as long as the ending is happy but the ending of this play is far from happy. Thus making people not wanting to relate to the characters who have doomed themselves to a life with someone that is not or does not want to be their soul mate. No one wants that in their life so to see someone that resembles themself even remotely is not a fun prospect. Thus the true double meaning of the word captious in Helena's speech is captive. This is my ideas on the subject but this is probably not what Shakespeare truly meant but as it allows me to see more meaning in the text it is the correct answer as everyone else's answer will be correct for them even though it will probably differ greatly from mine.