The stage-history of this comedy is brief and inglorious. There is no record of its performance (or of any performance of Love's Labour's Won) before the closing of the theatres; and although it appears in the list (of January, 1669) of plays allotted to Killigrew for the King's Company … , he seems to have made no use of it. The first known performance was at Goodman's Fields Theatre on March 7, 1741, seven months before 'a Gentleman (who never appeared on any Stage),' in other words David Garrick, made theatrical history by appearing on those same boards as King Richard III. The play was given for the benefit of Mrs Giffard, the manager's wife, who acted Helena, her husband taking Bertram, with Peterson as Parolles and Miss Hippisley as Diana. The novelty was evidently liked, for it was given four times more in as many weeks. Just about that time Shakespeare's long-neglected comedies were coming into public favour; and in January, 1742, All's Well that Ends Well made its first known appearance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Mills as Bertram, Theophilus Cibber as Parolles, Mrs Woffington as Helena, Mrs Butler as the Countess and Macklin as the Clown. Mrs Woffington was taken ill and fainted on the stage. Milward, as the King, caught the cold of which he died not many days later. Theophilus Cibber had stolen the part of Parolles from Macklin, to whom it had been promised; and there was ill-feeling as well as illness in the company. But in spite of this untoward start the play had good success when it was tried again in February, and it reached ten performances that season. Cibber liked acting Parolles, and had brought the part into notice; but succeeding performances of the play seem to have been determined by the fancy taken for the part by Woodward, who, during nearly thirty years from 1746, acted Parolles in whichever of the two theatres he happened to be engaged at and also in his own management at Dublin. Mrs Pritchard, who began by being Helena, changed about 1756 to the Countess, and made it one of her best and best-liked impersonations. But at this period the comic elements in the play were given prominence over the romantic theme; and although Helena was acted by Miss Macklin, Mrs Palmer, Mrs Mattocks and Miss Farren, and Bertram by Palmer and Lewes, these parts were shorn of their poetry in order that more attention might be paid to Woodward as Parolles and to Yates, or Shuter, or Edwin as the Clown.

In or about 1794 John Philip Kemble took the play in hand and made a judicious version of it which brought it back pretty nearly to the original. At Drury Lane on December 12, 1794, he produced it, playing Bertram himself, with King for Parolles, John Bannister for the Clown, Mrs Powell for the Countess, and Mrs Jordan for Helena. Even with these players, the comedy cannot have been well received, for John Kemble did not try it again; and in 1811 Charles Kemble only got two performances out of it (May 24 and June 22) when he presented the same version at Covent Garden, with himself as Bertram, Fawcett as Parolles, Munden as 'Lefeu,' Blanchard as the Clown, Mrs H. Johnston as Helena (though from the printed acting edition it seems that that part had been intended for Sally Booth), and Mrs Weston as the Countess. We find Mrs Weston 'every thing that could be wished' in the same part at Bath in May, 1821, when the play had the good fortune to reach a third performance. But all readers of it will share the surprise of Professor Odell [in his Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, 2 vols., 1921] … at discovering that on October 12, 1832, All's Well that Ends Well was given at Covent Garden as an opera. Laporte had recently assumed the management of the theatre; and the playbill (which is in the collection of the Garrick Club) shows that he boldly gave the piece the sub-title, Love's Labour Won, got music for it from Rophino Lacy and scenery from the Grieves, cast Wilson for Bertram, Bartley for Lafeu, Jones for Parolles, Mrs Lovell for the Countess, Miss Shirreff for Diana (here surnamed Capulet) and Miss Inverarity for Helena, freely culled songs for the medley from other works by Shakespeare, and made a vaunted attraction of a masque of Oberon and Robin Goodfellow, more or less from A Midsummer-Night's Dream, with Miss Horton as Oberon and Miss Poole as Robin. Twenty years later, on September 1, 1852, the unhappy play, as found in the Folio, was given a trial by Samuel Phelps (who played Parolles) in his ninth season at Sadler's Wells; but more than half a century was to pass before anyone had the courage to try it again. In 1916 the Benson Company did the play at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. In May, 1920, the Elizabethan Stage Society, under Mr William Poel, gave two performances of it at the Ethical Church, Bayswater; and in 1922 the New Shakespeare Company made it the 'Birthday Play' at Stratford-upon-Avon. It is, of course, in the repertory of the Old Vic. I have found no record of its ever having been staged in the United States of America.