All's Well That Ends Well (Vol. 26) | J. L. Styan (essay date 1984)
J. L. Styan (essay date 1984)
SOURCE: "Issues of Performance: A Play Without a Past," in Shakespeare in Performance: All's Well That Ends Well, Manchester University Press, 1984, pp. 1-6.
[In the following excerpt, Styan provides a stage history of All's Well That Ends Well, arguing that "the 'indelicacy' of the central story … has ensured that the play has had not theatrical history worth mentioning until a few years ago."]
All's Well That Ends Well is for us virtually a new play, and in this it is not unlike another problem comedy that has only recently found an audience, Troilus and Cressida. The 'indelicacy' of the central story, in which a woman pursues a man all the way into his bed, has ensured that the play has had no theatrical history worth mentioning until a few years ago. It therefore comes to us largely unencumbered by the débris of stage tradition, and because of the ambiguities surrounding the woman...
[The entire page is 2128 words long]
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