Customer Reviews

All's Well that Ends Well (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.