The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare | All's Well That Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well Ambivalent and autumnal in mood, All's Well That Ends Well clearly belongs to the period of the problem comedies (of which it is perhaps the most accomplished and the most elusive), although its precise date, in the absence of any external evidence or clear topical references, is harder to fix. In vocabulary it is closely linked to Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, and it is most likely to have been written just after them, probably around 1604–5.
Text
The play's only substantive text is that printed in the First Folio, apparently (to judge from its inconsistent speech prefixes, idiosyncratic punctuation, and mute characters) from Shakespeare's own foul papers. This was probably the first play the Folio's compositors set from such copy, which may help to explain its high percentage of misprints, errors, and cruces. Some details—such as the play's division into five acts, its...
[The entire page is 2764 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
