SOURCE: "The Mingled Yarn of All's Well," in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. LXII, No. 1, January, 1963, pp. 61-76.

In the following essay, Calderwood surveys the principal themes and ambiguous conclusion of All's Well That Ends Well.

Perhaps the most problematic of the so-called "problem plays," All's Well That Ends Well has been received, both in the theater and in the study, with nearly unanimous disfavor. The principal objection of its critics, that the play lacks unity, would appear to be well-founded, for the relatively few serious attempts to elicit some sort of order have been largely selective, extorting a partial and particular coherence at the expense of major considerations which would vitiate the critical performance. W. W. Lawrence has presented a valuable but somewhat limited study of the analogues of the plot material, indicating the combination of the two folktale plots, "the healing of the king...