Part of: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare) All’s Well that Ends Well
- William Shakespeare (author)
- William James Craig (editor)
All’s Well that Ends Well has defied categorization for centuries. The winning of a reluctant husband by an over-eager bride, and the subsequent bed-trick that secures their continued marriage are morally complicated in ways that make the play more than a simple comedy. This edition comes from the 1916 Oxford University Press edition of all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.
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Critical Responses
Readers have never quite known what to do with All’s Well that Ends Well, which feels like it ought to be a comedy but sits uneasily with that definition. Some critics suggest it belongs to a category of plays called “problem plays” as a result.
The “bed trick”, where one character sleeps with another character while pretending to be someone else, drives the action of the second half of All’s Well. The bed-trick is a mainstay of early modern comedy, and it has been adopted wholeheartedly by film, television, and other media to the point of…
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