SOURCE: Bennett, Josephine Waters. “New Techniques of Comedy in All's Well That Ends Well.” Shakespeare Quarterly 18, no. 4 (autumn 1967): 337-62.

In the following essay, Bennett investigates the various comic techniques Shakespeare employed in All's Well That Ends Well, and argues that the play is more a comedy than a romance.

All's Well That Ends Well has long been a problem play in the sense that it presents unsolved problems to modern readers and producers. We have neither quarto nor record of performance to help date it,¹ and the variety of recent interpretations suggests that the playwright's intention is not now understood. Professor G. K. Hunter, in his excellent, recent edition, shrewdly observes that “criticism of All's Well has failed, for it has failed to provide a context within which the genuine virtues of the play can be appreciated.”² In fact, until we understand the intention of the playwright the...