SOURCE: Shapiro, Michael. “‘The Web of Our Life’: Human Frailty and Mutual Redemption in All's Well That Ends Well.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71, no. 4 (October 1972): 514-26.

In the following essay, Shapiro examines the theme of mutual redemption derived from self-knowledge in All's Well That Ends Well.

Toward the end of his Introduction to the New Arden edition of All's Well That Ends Well, G. K. Hunter outlines the case for considering the “problem plays” as precursors of the late romances.¹ Looking backward as well as forward, one can also approach All's Well and Measure for Measure as the last of Shakespeare's love comedies and see these “problem plays” as a transition from a relatively realistic mode to the predominantly symbolic mode of the final romances. Considered as a transitional work, All's Well is an exciting, if not altogether successful, experiment.

Most of the major critics of...