All's Well That Ends Well (Vol. 26) | Osbert Lancaster (essay date 1963)
Osbert Lancaster (essay date 1963)
SOURCE: An introduction to All's Well That Ends Well, in Introductions to Shakespeare, Michael Joseph Ltd., 1978.
[Lancaster was a noted English cartoonist and writer who designed the sets for Michael Benthall's 1953 staging of All's Well That Ends Well at the Old Vic. In the essay below, he explores the issues facing a producer of the play, maintaining that "the overriding problem … is how best to retain [the] audience's attention in the long sections when Parolles is off-stage."]
It would, manifestly, be foolish to try to maintain that All's Well That Ends Well is among the more successful of Shakespeare's works. While not wholeheartedly subscribing to the view put forward by certain critics that it is, in fact, a straight 'potboiler', it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that for once the dramatist has succumbed to the temptation, from which not even the greatest are wholely...
[The entire page is 1719 words long]
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