Product Description

Usually classifed as a 'problem comedy', All's Well that Ends Well invites a fresh assessment. Its psychologically disturbing presentation of an agressive, designing woman and a reluctant husband wooed by trickery won it little favour in earlier centuries, and both directors and critics have frequently tried to avoid or simplify its uncomfortable elements. More recently, several distinguished productions have revealed it as an exceptionally penetrating study of both personal and social issues. In her introduction Susan Snyder makes the play's clashing ideologies of class and gender newly accessible. She explains how the very discords of style can be seen as a source of theatrical power and complexity, and offers a fully reconsidered, helpfully annotated text for both readers and actors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45126 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
All's Well That Ends Well has generally been considered one of Shakespeare's most difficult and unpopular plays. Labelled a "Problem Comedy", editors believe that the play was written between 1604 and 1605, and exhibits a darkening of Shakespeare's interest in comedy. The play deals with the complicated relationship between Helena, the daughter of a famous physician, and Bertram, the arrogant son of the Countess of Roussillon. Helena is secretly in love with Bertram, and when she miraculously cures the ailing King, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage, to which the grateful sovereign happily agrees. Bertram bitterly opposes marriage to Helena, who he regards as a social inferior. After reluctantly agreeing to the marriage, Bertram flees to the wars in Italy with his companion Parolles.

What ensues is Helena's increasingly desperate and complex attempts to retrieve her errant husband, which involves various machinations and a piece of mistaken identity and an infamous "bed-trick" which has never fully convinced audiences or critics. More recently critics have been kinder to the play, seeing its cynical disillusionment with romance as reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties about warfare and commerce, and feminist critics have been keen to celebrate Helena as a particularly complex heroine. The play is also fascinated by language, encapsulated in the character of Parolles (or "words"), and his memorable line for which the play is chiefly remembered: "Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live". --Jerry Brotton

About the Author
Susan Snyder is Gil and Frank Mustin Professor of English Literature, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Tricky, but Arkangel makes it work
I knew almost nothing about this play, but really enjoyed it. The plot is very straightforward: the modestly born but intelligent Helena fulfills the conditions set by her reluctant husband, by tricking him into having sex with her while under the impression that she is someone else. Also there's a subplot with his dubious friend Parolles getting publicly humiliated. Slightly tricky to do this well, I imagine: Helena has to engage the audience's sympathy, and Bertram's reluctance to allow her to be foisted on him turns around rather rapidly in the last scene; also Parolles has to be sufficiently unpleasant that the audience laughs at his downfall rather than sympathising with him. But Arkangel largely make it work, with Emily Woof (whose name I don't remember from anything else, and I think I would have done) excellent as Helena, and good old Clive Swift an impressive King of France, cured by her medical knowledge. (Is there any earlier depiction of a woman doctor in literature? I see this story comes from Boccaccio, but Shakespeare may have introduced that detail.) An unexpected pleasure, and I put other reading aside to finish it on my way home.