I have often wondered what exactly is meant by a problem play? Is it a play which teases the audience, or a play which teases the author? In Shakespeare it is generally a play in which two people find themselves in bed together for reasons which the dramatist thinks are right and the audience thinks are wrong. What, we ask, had Mariana and Angelo [in Measure for Measure] in their different ways, deserved that their contract should be consummated? Why was Mariana not allowed her lucky escape? And if Angelo was forgiven, need he have been so liberally rewarded? These questions are of course elementary, and the Shakespearian has his answer to them, even if the answers don't always agree. They are raised, very particularly, by All's Well that Ends Well; and the problematic nature of the play is underlined by the fact that many of us will be inclined to put a question-mark after the title—a liberty which even the program allowed us. When something in Shakespeare offends our sense of justice, we are inclined to put it down to allegory—just as when something of fends our sense of probability we are inclined to put it down to myth, or even to theatrical convention. I am not saying we are necessarily wrong, but I think we do well to remember that Shakespeare was apparently capable of everything except the invention of his own plots, and that when the Globe wanted a play he had to provide one. We must always try to look at his plays—and particularly at this play—through Elizabethan spectacles. Neither to him, nor to his audience, would Helena's conquest of Bertram have appeared so outrageous as it does to us. Having already done more than anyone to give romantic love its marriage-lines, he was no doubt interested to suggest, though doubtfully to prove, that marriage can be based on something other than mutual inclination.

The theme of All's Well that Ends Well is salvation. First, the King must be saved physically, because he embodies the well-being of the realm. Then Bertram must be saved morally, and Helena is the providential instrument of this double cure. It is, therefore, very much to the point that Bertram is an insufferable cad and indefatigable coureur, and the last person to fall in love with a messianic young woman, whose blood was considerably less blue than her stockings. She, it is true, is more immediately interested in securing his scalp than in securing his salvation; the salvation is Shakespeare's business. But if Helena disposes of her heart, the King disposes of her hand—very much as the omniscient Duke disposes of Mariana in Measure for Measure. In each case, the purpose is redemption rather than felicity, and no trick is too dirty to achieve it.

A comparison between Mr. Barton's and Sir Tyrone Guthrie's treatment of the play some years ago was peculiarly instructive. Guthrie daringly put it into modern dress, taking over Shaw's conception of Helena as the first feminist, going after her man and getting him. At the same time, however, he allowed her the charismatic powers which cured the King and excused him for thinking that she might work a similar miracle for Bertram. The part was played with great intensity by Zoe Caldwell. In the present production Miss Esther Kohler was encouraged to make the least of her considerable attractions, to such an extent that Bertram might be forgiven for not finding her irresistible. Nor did her charismatic powers amount to very much more than the application of the right prescription. So, although in many respects Mr. Barton had treated the play more simply and straightforwardly than Sir Tyrone Guthrie, he had also demythologized it. It stood or fell as an example of Shakespeare's tragical-comical vein—and much more comical than tragical.

Mr. Barton would probably argue that he had put the comedy where it properly belongs. With Parolles, certainly, in Mr. Clive Swift's shambling and effective performance; too noisily, I thought, in Mr. Ian Hogg's Lavache. This part was unwisely, and quite unnecessarily, cut by Sir Tyrone Guthrie. Bridges-Adams used to have him played as the gardener; and although, as I know from experience, gardeners can be loquacious and importunate they don't, as a rule, shatter the ear-drums of the people who employ them. On the other hand, the Duke of Florence, who can by no stretch of imagination be described as comic character, was transformed by Guthrie into a nonagenarian general issuing his orders through a microphone. The tiny scene was expanded into a full-scale military inspection, and—inevitably—into the hit of the evening. Mr. Barton would have none of this embroidery, and Mr. Cicciarelli's Duke was a Renaissance portrait, as authentically Italian as his name. But the cue for the production was really given by Mr. Richardson's Bertram—as witty an exhibition of light and near fantastic comedy as he has ever given us. With Guthrie, as I recall, Bertram was no more than a sulky lieutenant in the Brigade of Guards who would have been thanked for his pennies but hardly for his pains in the shadier quarters of Florence—a city not particularly renowned for these amenities. Only a Helena deprived of all sense of humor, and as dedicated as Major Barbara herself, would have put up with him for five minutes. But Miss Kohler has latent comedy in her looks, even if Shakespeare has allowed her none in her performance, and it seemed just possible that she and Mr. Richardson would have made a match of it—for this Bertram was incessantly amusing at his own expense as well as at other people's.

In these circumstances it was wise not to overweight the King and the Countess. Mr. Sebastian Shaw, whose presence and personality are very welcome to Stratford, took illness and health and the duties of unconsititutional monarchy fairly lightly in his stride, but neither with him nor with anyone else did we lose anything of the beautiful verse with which this curious play is intermittently sprinkled. Miss Lacey's Countess did not take things too tragically either—an Olivia, you might have said, grown more sensible with the years, now widowed of Sebastian, with a Feste altogether too big for his buskins. These were among the rare crepuscular moments in a production which generally let in the daylight, and Miss Lacey was beautifully suited. So, needless to say, was Mr. Brewster Mason; his Lafeu could not have put a foot wrong if he had tried to, for Mr. Mason has protocol in his finger-tips. But the greatest contrast with Guthrie's extravaganza was in the sobriety and simplicity of the setting. No autumnal leaves threatened to fall from the beech trees of Languedoc; what we had was essentially an Elizabethan platform with a pair of moveable panels translating us without difficulty from one place to another. It was interesting to see how well simplicity could serve a play which is anything but simple. I don't know whether I have read Mr. Barton's intentions aright—to say nothing of Shakespeare's—but it was an immensely enjoyable evening.