Notably, the danger of becoming a social outcast is not securely tied to an age demographic although romantic intimacy promising or concluding in marriage stands as the primary goal of all purchasing conduct, the time of vulnerability to rejection is surprisingly extended-from early adolescence when social reputation is established to prime matrimonial age and reaching into years after marriage. Attendant to the development of romantic and social promises extended by these ads is the woeful character of the lonely and excluded woman. Popular advertising of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s depicting single women presents an especially useful reference point for Lorine Niedecker’s poems. The play positions Helena not only as a practitioner of household medicine skilled in caring for humans and animals alike, but also as a subtle and resourceful horsewoman able to coerce others to do her bidding. Such medicines take as a given the human body’s embeddedness on its surroundings, revealing an essential dependence between humans and horses, often blurring the boundaries assumed to exist between them. These books make clear that some cures for fistulas could be used on humans or on horses. Early modern recipe books provide a valuable glimpse of how seventeenth century viewers might have pictured the interconnectedness of human and animal bodies, in health and in sickness. This is particularly striking given that the play associates both the King and Bertram-the two men she must win over to gain happiness-with images of veterinary care and riding as represented in the era’s household medical and horsemanship manuals. Helena’s success in curing the King’s fistula and conceiving Bertram’s child have not been linked to the skills involved in working with horses, let alone the blurring of boundaries between the human and the equine. Without visual cues, modern viewers may not discern the ways that All’s Well That Ends Well brings together the bodies of horses and humans, asking viewers to consider the physical dependence and sometimes overlapping medical conditions the two species share.
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