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Updated: June 11, 2025
Parolles boasts of being born under the sign of Mars, and up to every heroic deed; and it is certainly an allusion to Jonson's bravado of having in the Low Countries, in the face of both camps, killed an enemy and taken opima spolia from him, that Shakspere lets this character make the attempt to retake, single-handed, from the enemy, a drum that had been lost in the battle.
The mystification by which his pretended valour and his shameless slanders are unmasked must be ranked among the most comic scenes that ever were invented: they contain matter enough for an excellent comedy, if Shakspeare were not always rich even to profusion. Falstaff has thrown Parolles into the shade, otherwise among the poet's comic characters he would have been still more famous.
Bertram was present, and heard a letter read, in which Parolles told Diana that he was a fool. "This is your devoted friend," said a French lord. "He is a cat to me now," said Bertram, who detested our hearthrug pets. Parolles was finally let go, but henceforth he felt like a sneak, and was not addicted to boasting.
We make bold to say that the creator of Parolles and Lucie, and many another lax and lovable knave, would, had he been a Scot, have drawn Andrew Fairservice thus, and not otherwise. The critics of the hour censured, as they were certain to censure, the construction, and especially the conclusion, of "Rob Roy." No doubt the critics were right.
When 'Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist, that had the whole theory of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the chape of his dagger, was convicted of mendacity and cowardice, Bertram exclaimed, 'I could endure anything before this but a cat, and now he's a cat to me. The force of censure could no further go.
"I wash his name out of my blood, and you alone are my child." The Dowager Countess, however, was still mother enough to Bertram to lay the blame of his conduct on Parolles, whom she called "a very tainted fellow." Helena did not stay long at Rousillon. She clad herself as a pilgrim, and, leaving a letter for her mother-in-law, secretly set out for Florence.
Over what tragedy could Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library? A modern reader can make shift without Oedipus and Medea, while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles.
'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous accident; especially when we find that Jonson, in 'The Poetaster, again tries to ridicule this hit by a characteristic expression. Parolles is a follower of Count Rousillon.
The style of the whole is more sententious than imaginative: the glowing colours of fancy could not with propriety have been employed on such a subject. In the passages where the humiliating rejection of the poor Helena is most painfully affecting, the cowardly Parolles steps in to the relief of the spectator.
Neither has he envious characters, excepting the short part of Don John, in 'Much Ado about Nothing. Neither has he unentertaining characters, if we except Parolles, and the little that there is of the Clown, in 'All's Well that Ends Well."
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