ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, mother to Bertram.

HELENA, a gentlewoman protected by the Countess.
An old Widow of Florence.

DIANA, daughter to the Widow.

VIOLENTA,

MARIANA,

} neighbours and friends to the Widow.

Lords, Officers, Soldiers, etc., French and Florentine.

SCENE: Rousillon; Paris; Florence; Marseilles.

Dramatis Persona. In Ff Rousillon commonly appears as Rossillion, Helena as Hellen.

ΙΙΟ

INTRODUCTION

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL was first printed in the Folio of 1623. It is there divided into acts, but not into scenes. The printing is careless, and the text offers many problems. External clues to the date are wholly wanting. No early performance is recorded; no early mention of the play had been found. The internal evidence is complicated. Coleridge was the first to insist upon the sharp inequalities of style, which point to a partial revision by Shakespeare of an earlier piece of his own, much of which he retained intact. Side by side with the supple, sinewy dramatic verse of the Hamlet period, we have speeches full of the lyrical sweetness and the dainty artifice of the earliest comedies, with a singular abundance of rhyme. The mere use of rhyme tells us little, and the so-called 'rhyme-test' is almost useless as a guide to date. For two purposes, at least, Shakespeare continued to use it as late as Othello. It marks a sudden lyrical exaltation (as in Beatrice's outburst, Much Ado, iii. 1. 107 f.) or sententious reflections (as in the moral conclusions of the duke and Brabantio in Othello, i. 3. 198-219). On the other hand, its use in ordinary dialogue, or in letters, is characteristic of plays not later than 1595.

Some of the rhymed passages in our play which

have been claimed as 'early' belong to one or other of the former classes: e.g. Helen's often-quoted lines (i. I. 231-244):

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven;

and the countess' reflections upon Helen's love (i. 3. 134 f.). They may be early, but the 'test' is not here decisive. On the other hand, a grave suspicion of 'earliness' rests both upon the two rhymed letters of Helen (iii. 4) and Parolles (iv. 3); and upon several scenes in which rhyme is used as a vehicle for pure 'business.' These are: Helen's first interview with the king (ii. 1. 132-212), much of the choosing scene (ii. 3. 106 f.), and the greater part of the dénoûment (v. 3). Just these passages, moreover, abound in conceits, verbal antitheses, and other more decisive marks of early manner, e.g. ii. 1. 160-1:

But know I think, and think I know most sure
My art is not past power, nor you past cure.

Similarly in ii. 1. 136, 146, 171, etc.

Most striking

of all perhaps is Helen's mode of defining within what space she hopes the king's cure.'

The great'st grace lending grace,

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring
Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring,

Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp,

Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass

Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, etc.

This was by no means meant for burlesque; but nothing that Shakespeare has written is so like it as the burlesque verses of the player king and queen in Hamlet. Those verses do but exaggerate his own manner of twelve or fourteen years earlier. And the