Such a theme introduces the conception of one’s ‘natural place’ in society, the position for which one is fitted by one’s talents and social function.”18 Shakespeare perennially pitted old values and structures against new, perhaps especially so in the changed world of the first years of King James’ reign, after old Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Northrop Frye again:

All’s Well has a … restless feeling of social change about it, with Bertram being pulled out of the clichés of family pride in the direction of Helena’s still mysterious capacities, Helena herself advancing from the background of the Roussillon household to a primary place in it, the clown Lavache turning philosophical, and the captain Parolles becoming a licensed fool in Lafeu’s train … especially in Lavache’s oracular speech, there is a faint whisper of the vision of social reversal … The king remains the king, of course, but when the actor playing him goes out to ask for the audience’s applause, his opening line is “The king’s a beggar, now the play is done.”19

The secular social and political order jostles against an ancient, more magical and providential, way of thinking, embodied by the virtues of the older generation, who constitute Shakespeare’s most striking addition to his source in Boccaccio: “The character and moral weight Shakespeare gives [the King] strengthen the effects of the Countess and Lafeu as types of old nobility: surviving exemplars of a generation, or a world, which is passing away. He is a sadly nostalgic figure.”20

The sense of a transitional moment between two worlds helps to explain the puzzling tone of the ending. Beside the tragic potential there are elements of magical restitution and regeneration akin to those in Shakespeare’s late romances such as The Winter’s Tale and Pericles. There is a progression from Helen’s miraculous cure of the King to her own “resurrection” and the (apparent?) moral regeneration of Bertram. As the King comes close to death and Helen is supposed to have died but returns home to become a wife, so “Parolles, who blindfolded has heard the order for his own execution, discovers when his blindfold is removed—symbolically as well as actually—that he is not really going to be killed. Bertram, too … is recalled from death in the course of the play.”21 All’s Well is a complex drama of both death and new life:

There is the current of self-wasting energy … symbolized by Bertram’s self-will, Parolles’ lack of heroism, and Lavache’s vision of the great mass of people drifting to the “broad gate and the great fire.” There is also the reversal of this current of energy backward into a renewed and creative life. The play opens with older characters “all in black,” talking mainly about the dead; it proceeds through the healing of an impotent king … Helena rejuvenates the family, the king, and may even rejuvenate Bertram’s fixated notions of family honour and tradition.22

Certainly the play offers an explicit challenge to its own title, the old comic idea of all’s well that ends well:

From a “universal” point of view, we may see the dramatic world thrown into disorder and confusion by Helena’s elaborate introduction of half-truths and then miraculously restored to order and sanity when Helena herself comes forward, returned from the dead, to dispense a spirit of love and charity. But even so, there is Bertram—deceitful, vindictive, petty—a very real and unpleasant fly in the ointment of universal forgiveness.23

But ultimately, in the words of John Barton, among the most critically astute of modern Shakespearean directors, “ ‘cynical’ isn’t quite the right word for the ending: the tone is more one of a worldly tolerance of people.”24

ABOUT THE TEXT

Shakespeare endures through history. He illuminates later times as well as his own. He helps us to understand the human condition. But he cannot do this without a good text of the plays. Without editions there would be no Shakespeare. That is why every twenty years or so throughout the last three centuries there has been a major new edition of his complete works. One aspect of editing is the process of keeping the texts up to date—modernizing the spelling, punctuation, and typography (though not, of course, the actual words), providing explanatory notes in the light of changing educational practices (a generation ago, most of Shakespeare’s classical and biblical allusions could be assumed to be generally understood, but now they can’t).

Because Shakespeare did not personally oversee the publication of his plays, with some plays there are major editorial difficulties. Decisions have to be made as to the relative authority of the early printed editions, the pocket format “Quartos” published in Shakespeare’s lifetime and the elaborately produced “First Folio” text of 1623, the original “Complete Works” prepared for the press after his death by Shakespeare’s fellow actors, the people who knew the plays better than anyone else. All’s Well That Ends Well exists only in a Folio text that is problematic in some aspects and suggests a rather difficult-to-read manuscript was used as printer’s copy (see “Key Facts”).

The following notes highlight various aspects of the editorial process and indicate conventions used in the text of this edition:

Lists of Parts are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, not including All’s Well That Ends Well, so the list here is editorially supplied. Capitals indicate that part of the name used for speech headings in the script (thus “BERTRAM, Count of Rossillion”).

Locations are provided by Folio for only two plays, of which All’s Well That Ends Well is not one. Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations (“another part of the city”). Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes, where they are given at the beginning of each scene where the imaginary location is different from the one before.

Act and Scene Divisions were provided in the Folio in a much more thoroughgoing way than in the Quartos. Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse which the King’s Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare’s fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a running scene count in the right margin at the beginning of each new scene, in the typeface used for editorial directions. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention running scene continues. There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgment in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays.

Speakers’ Names are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an element of deliberate inconsistency in entry directions, in order to give the flavor of Folio. Thus BERTRAM is always so-called in his speech headings, but is often referred to as “Count of Rossillion,” “Count Rossillion,” or “Count” in entry directions.

Verse is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned toward the preservation of Folio layout.