All’s Well That Ends Well: ‘The Web of Our Life is of a Mingled Yarn’
Episode 211:
Through the last few episodes on Shakespeare’s plays, we seem to have seen a playwright in a serious mood, even when he was writing comedies. ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Measure For Measure’ are often referred to as having an autumnal tone, something serious underlying the comedy and of course we also have the even darker worlds of the tragedies of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Othello’. The next play we come to from Shakespeare fits well into this group, but I choose my words carefully there because I can’t say for sure that ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ was his ‘next’ play after ‘Measure For Measure’ as the dating of this comedy is difficult.
The dating of the play
The sources for the play
A brief summary of the plot
How Shakespeare subverts the original folk tale into a comedy
Irony in the play
The two sides of the character of Helen
What does Helen see in Bertram?
The role reversal between Helen and Bertram
The character of Bertram
The bed trick
The character of Parolas
Some examples of criticism of the play
The performance history of the play
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