Some things to know about the play:

Written somewhere between 1603-1605, All’s Well comes after the
great comedies like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It,
Twelfth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing, which means that
Shakespeare had already mastered the comic form and did indeed
know how to write a happy ending to leave an audience thoroughly
satisfied with romantic love that triumphs over all obstacles. So we
have to assume that Shakespeare was aiming at a different kind of
experience in All’s Well, something more like real life, perhaps, where
complexity and compromise, pragmatism and reality more often
determine the ending, and nothing is as tidy and resolved as we wish
it were. The “bed trick” in which one woman is substituted for another
in the dark to trick a man into consummating the “correct”
relationship rather than the inappropriate one was common enough
on the early modern stage. Both Measure for Measure and All’s Well
(written at about the same time) use this plot device, and both plays
seem uncomfortable with the traditional happy ending, leaving
unresolved questions and expectations where smiles and laughter
(and dancing) might have sufficed in the earlier comedies.

Although clearly built on a comic structure, following the struggles of
a young couple to achieve wedded bliss, All’s Well That Ends Well has
been grouped with other plays like Measure for Measure as a “problem
play” because it refuses to conform to the expectations (like the hope
for a happy ending) it encourages in its audience. In addition, the play
dramatizes some of the crucial social problems of Shakespeare’s time,
including the tensions between older and younger generations,
between men and women, and between different social classes,
making it a play more about unresolved problems than about the
smooth working out of a romantic love plot.

Many critics have remarked that the play asks more questions than it
answers, and in so doing, it allows us to continue asking them
ourselves, questions like how human beings learn to conform to
gender roles, how we use each other in forging identity, how
storytelling affects us, and whether there is such a thing as a perfectly
happy, unforced ending.

Magical Realism is a 20th Century movement in literature where a
realistic narrative is invaded by magical elements or events, so that
the everyday and the miraculous are unexpectedly intertwined. All’s
Well That Ends Well seems to predict such a movement, providing its
audience with a powerful but destabilizing experience much like that
of magical realism. Some critics have felt an “unresolved tension
between the play’s romantic and realistic modes…” as the play
juxtaposes a fairy-tale plot (Helena, a low-born but clever woman has
to perform a series of miracles in order to win herself a prince) with
the gritty realism of the mundane world (the Queen’s “fistula” or
oozing sore is surprisingly specific, and Parolles describes Helena’s
virginity as “a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer
kept, the less worth. Off with ‘t while ‘tis vendible”). This clash
between the ideal world of romance and magic, and the real world of
mundane details and unpleasant realities is part of what makes the
play a compelling experience for modern audiences.

If we are uncomfortable with the sort of compromise position we get
in the final moments of this darker comedy, it may be because, as one
critic says: “In life we, like Helena and her society, cannot make all end
well, although we want to. All’s Well makes us experience the longing
and sadness which cause us to idealize [our loved ones]—and which
often result from our attempt to do so.” In this view, the play looks at
romantic love in a realistic way, asking us to see that when we idealize
another human being (as young lovers inevitably do), we are setting
ourselves up for disappointment and conflict. One of the beauties of a
complex play like All’s Well, then, is its honesty. By refusing to give us
a happy ending free of human frailty, the play “imitate[s] life as we
know it. The longing for goodness remains, along with the awareness
that we long, and that we can be only partly satisfied. To admit the
sadness, and that the wish for goodness is just that, a wish, can make
us realize that there are no perfect solutions” where all’s well no
matter how we get there. Instead, there is always a price to be paid for
a resolution, however compromised, and an audience is not allowed
to forget that. (Quotes are from Joel Westlund, “Longing and Sadness
in All’s Well”).

The earliest printed version of the play is in the First Folio of
Shakespeare’s collected works published in 1623, seven years after
his death. The first performance of All’s Well still on record was in
London in 1741, about a hundred and forty years after it was written.
According to reports, Parolles was the main attraction in that
performance, and many of the early productions followed suit by
cutting away much of the play to focus only on Parolles’ comic
downfall. Although stage productions were often popular with
audiences and critics, throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th
Centuries most directors significantly adapted the play to emphasize
either the comic sub-plot of Parolles, or, less often, by cutting Parolles
to create a more sentimental drama focusing on the love story of
Helena and Bertram. Not until 1920 and the success of the suffragette
movement did a notable production (directed by William Poel) exploit
the gender politics of the play “emphasizing Helena as a woman free
from society’s conventions.” This production was seen as as a tribute
to feminists during their moment of triumph.

Feminism is another 20th Century phenomenon that makes All’s Well
seem oddly prescient. Helena, the play’s heroine, reverses the typical
fairytale plot such as we find with Portia in The Merchant of Venice,
where a lady richly left waits in her fairy tale castle for a prince to
come along and win her hand by solving a riddle. In All’s Well Helena
is an active heroine who embarks on a quest, performs a miracle, wins
the hand of her beloved, and when rejected by him, continues on a
pilgrimage that takes her far beyond her home to a place where she
must arrange to lose her virginity without losing her honor, and solve
the riddle of getting a ring and a child from a man who has sworn
never to give her either. Helena’s active, heroic role puts Bertram in
the position of the passive object, waiting to be chosen, and he does
not like it. Most productions will have to come to terms with this
upside down quality in the gender dynamics of the play; we set the
play in a time of great social upheaval and freedom for women in
particular, the 1960’s. We hope you enjoy the play!