All's Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare Project Lecture)

'The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.'

Our thrilling adventure through the works of William Shakespeare continues with All's Well That Ends Well.

We’re discussing long lost plays, multiple authors, problem plays, subverting comic conventions, corrupted fairy tales, mythic skeleton keys, biographical readings, bed tricks, and much more.

Timestamps:

0:00 my personal feelings about this play

2:00 arriving here after the tragic procession

3:00 Shakespeare as influence upon himself

5:00 returning to those earlier comedies

7:00 did Shakespeare actually write this play?

8:00 alternative title for Love’s Labour’s Won?

10:00 irony in the titles of Shakespeare’s plays

11:00 the influence of Boccaccio’s Decameron

12:00 the melancholy atmosphere of the comedy

14:00 Helen’s expressed love for Count Bertram

17:00 is this play a corrupted fairy tale?

19:00 Doctor She rewarded for curing the King

21:00 Count Bertram’s refusal of Helen’s hand

23:00 male homosocial bonds vs true love

25:00 responses to the character of Bertram

26:00 Shakespeare’s mythic skeleton key

28:00 Ted Hughes’ biographical reading

31:00 Bertram as the bard’s self-purgation?

32:00 can we understand Bertram at all?

34:00 wars vs dark house & detested wife

35:00 ‘I have wedded her, not bedded her’

37:00 Bertram’s challenge to Helen

40:00 the age-old trope of the bed trick

42:00 the main tragedy in Shakespeare’s world

44:00 layered pathos in the bed trick

45:00 the symbolism of roses with thorns

47:00 appreciating my personal one passage

49:00 the reappearance of the pregnant Helen

51:00 does this play really have a happy ending?

54:00 what are your thoughts about this play?

Recommended Resources:

• Recommended Edition: The Arden edition continues to make a superb choice as the introduction and footnotes are often incredibly illuminating. This notes are particularly good for this play, thanks to editors Suzanne Gossett and Helen Wilcox.

• Audio Dramatisation: The BBC put together a very good audio dramatisation of this play in 2003 starring Emma Fielding, Richard Griffiths, Carl Prekopp, and Simon Russell Beale.

• Playwright Follow-up: There are many who see Thomas Middleton's hand alongside Shakespeare's in this play. If you're interested to see what Will's contemporaries were producing, you might use this as an opportunity to investigate some of his plays. This edition collects five of them together, including The Revenger's Tragedy and The Changeling.

• Source Material: You may also like to leverage your reading of Shakespeare into further important works of literature by exploring his source material. For this play, that means enjoyably rifling through Boccaccio's Decameron.

• Mythic Framework: Ted Hughes proposed the idea that Shakespeare used a mythic skeleton key throughout his writing career in a book called Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being that is fascinating, provocative, and thought-provoking.

• Our Journey Thus Far: If you want to jump into any specific play, you can check out the works we've enjoyed thus far as part of our read-through here.

Questions for You:

1) Do you enjoy Shakespeare's subversion of comedy?

2) What do you make of the main characters in this play?

3) What line, passage, idea, or character most resonated with you? And what is your personal grading for All's Well That Ends Well?

Happy reading, Bardolators!