Original: Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city.
Modern: When virginity is destroyed, men are more easily aroused, but when you knock him down again through the opening you created, you lose your fortress.

Original: It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity.
Modern: It’s not wise in the natural order of things to hold onto virginity.

Original: Loss of virginity is rational increase and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost.
Modern: Losing virginity makes logical sense for growth, and no virgin was ever born until someone first lost their virginity.

Original: That you were made of is metal to make virgins.
Modern: The same material you’re made from is meant to create more virgins.

Original: Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost: ‘tis too cold a companion; away with ‘t!
Modern: Virginity, once lost, can be regained ten times over through children; by keeping it forever, you lose it completely—it’s too cold a companion, so get rid of it!

Original: There’s little can be said in ‘t; ‘tis against the rule of nature.
Modern: There’s not much good to say about keeping virginity; it goes against nature’s rules.

Original: To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience.
Modern: To argue in favor of virginity is to criticize your mothers for having sex, which is definitely disobedient.

Original: He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature.
Modern: Someone who kills himself might as well be a virgin: virginity destroys itself and should be buried on roadsides outside holy ground, like a criminal against nature.

Original: Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
Modern: Virginity breeds parasites like old cheese; it eats itself down to nothing and dies from feeding on itself.

Original: Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon.
Modern: Besides, virginity is irritable, arrogant, lazy, and selfish, which is the most forbidden sin in religious law.

Original: Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose by’t: out with ‘t!
Modern: Don’t keep it; you can only lose by holding onto it—get rid of it!

Original: within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: away with ‘t!
Modern: Within ten years it could multiply into ten children, which is excellent profit, and you yourself won’t be much worse off—so away with it!

Act I, Scene i of All’s Well That Ends Well opens in the Count’s palace in Rossillion, where the young Bertram is preparing to depart for the French court in Paris. The household is in mourning, as the Count of Rossillion has recently died. Bertram’s mother, the Countess, bids her son farewell, offering him counsel on how to conduct himself honorably at court. Also present is Helena, the orphaned daughter of a renowned physician named Gerard de Narbon, who has been taken in and raised under the Countess’s care. The King of France, who was a close friend of the late Count, has summoned Bertram to court. The family friend and lord, Lafew, accompanies Bertram on his journey and serves as an escort. After the departure of Bertram, Lafew, and the Countess, Helena is left alone on stage, where she reveals in soliloquy that she is deeply in love with Bertram, though she considers him far above her station and regards her love as hopeless.

Following Helena’s soliloquy, Parolles enters — a boastful and roguish companion of Bertram’s — and engages Helena in a witty and bawdy exchange about virginity. Parolles argues that virginity is a commodity that loses its value the longer it is kept, and the two trade sharp verbal volleys on the subject. Despite his roguish nature, Parolles inadvertently encourages Helena by suggesting that a young woman ought to make the most of her youth and opportunities. After Parolles exits to rejoin Bertram, Helena is left alone once more and delivers a second soliloquy in which she resolves that her love for Bertram need not remain hopeless. She recalls that her late father left behind remarkable medical remedies, and she begins to conceive of a plan that might bring her closer to Bertram by using those remedies to cure the ailing King of France.

“All’s Well That Ends Well” follows Helena, a physician’s daughter living in the household of the Countess of Rousillon, who is deeply in love with the Countess’s son, Bertram. When the King of France falls gravely ill, Helena travels to court and offers to cure him using remedies learned from her late father. She succeeds in healing the King, who grants her any husband of her choosing as reward. Helena selects Bertram, but he reluctantly marries her and immediately departs for the wars in Italy, declaring he will never consummate the marriage until she can obtain his ancestral ring and bear his child - conditions he believes impossible to fulfill.

Helena returns to Rousillon, where she learns of Bertram’s conditions through a letter. Disguising herself as a pilgrim, she travels to Florence, where Bertram is staying and pursuing Diana, a young woman whose mother keeps a lodging house. Helena reveals her identity to Diana and her mother, proposing a bed trick: Diana will agree to meet Bertram secretly, but Helena will take her place in the darkness. During their encounter, Helena obtains Bertram’s ring and gives him another ring that the King had previously given her.

Helena spreads word of her own death and returns to France, where Bertram has come to seek a new wife with the King’s blessing. When Bertram presents Helena’s ring to his prospective bride, the King recognizes it and suspects Bertram of murdering Helena. Diana arrives and presents Bertram’s ring as proof of their relationship, leading to confusion until Helena appears, pregnant with Bertram’s child and wearing his family ring. Faced with the fulfillment of his impossible conditions, Bertram accepts Helena as his true wife, and the King promises to arrange Diana’s marriage to a suitable husband.