Usually classified as a "problem comedy," All's Well that Ends Well is a psychologically disturbing presentation of an aggressive, designing woman and a reluctant husband wooed by trickery. In her introduction Susan Snyder makes the play's clashing ideologies of class and gender newly accessible, and offers a fully reconsidered, annotated text for both readers and actors.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Susan Snyder is Gil and Frank Mustin Professor of English Literature, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good edition,
This review is from: All's Well that Ends Well (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
As you would expect from Oxford, this is a very well done edition of the play, with a comprehensive introduction (though I wished for a little more theatre history myself) that covers the major issues in this "problem" comedy (though it is not nearly so much a problem play as, say, Troilus and Cressida, in fact being much closer in many ways to Measure for Measure), several textual appendices, an index, useful textual- and foot-notes (there seem to be a great many phrasings in this play that need explanation--a result of revision?), and two of Shakespeare's direct sources in Erasmus and Painter. There were a few points when I disagreed with the interpreations offered in the footnotes, but overall, the apparatus is excellent.
As for the play itself, the main action concerns the efforts of Helen to recapture her husband Bertram, who is given to her by the King as a reward for curing his fistula. He does not think she, as a physician's daughter, is worthy of his station and flees to the wars in Italy without consumating the marriage. The comic subplot involves the exposure of the cowardice of his companion, Paroles. Helen evnetually fulfills the requirements Bertram sets out in a letter--to obtain his ring and bear a child by him--through a bed trick, and the play ends where it began, with the King (echoes of Lear?) offering Diana, who helped in the trick, her choice of husband. Overall, a very good edition of a less popular play.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Names: in adopting Helen rather than the usual Helena, I follow the preference revealed in the Folio text, in which Helena occurs only once in dialogue and three times in stage directions, all before the end of Act Two, whereas Helen or Hellen is the only form used in the last three acts and overall decidedly outweighs the longer form with twenty-five occurrences Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
entrance direction, speech prefixes, foul papers, mine honour Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Enter Helen, Count Roussillon, Enter Bertram, Enter Paroles, Monsieur Paroles, Captain Dumaine, Enter Clown, Exit Attendant, Twelfth Night New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Names: in adopting Helen rather than the usual Helena, I follow the preference revealed in the Folio text, in which Helena occurs only once in dialogue and three times in stage directions, all before the end of Act Two, whereas Helen or Hellen is the only form used in the last three acts and overall decidedly outweighs the longer form with twenty-five occurrences Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
entrance direction, speech prefixes, foul papers, mine honour Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Enter Helen, Count Roussillon, Enter Bertram, Enter Paroles, Monsieur Paroles, Captain Dumaine, Enter Clown, Exit Attendant, Twelfth Night New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 51
books:
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10
books
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- Measure for Measure (Oxford School Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare on 4 pages
- Measure for Measure (Signet Classics) by William Shakespeare on 4 pages
- The Taming of the Shrew (New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
- The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
- Palace of Pleasure (Volume Three), The by Joseph Jacobs in Front Matter, and Back Matter
See all 51 books this book cites
- Shakespeare Book of Lists by Michael Lomonico on page 108, and page 206
- Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness: Its Play and Tolerance by Maurice Hunt on page 14
- The History of English in a Social Context: A Contribution to Historical Sociolinguistics (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 129) by Dieter Kastovsky on page 20
- Service and Dependency in Shakespeare's Plays by Judith Weil in Back Matter
- Darling Judi: A Celebration of Judi Dench by John Miller in Back Matter
See all 10 books citing this book
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