Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by RICHARD GRANT WHITE In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON & SON, All's Well that Ends Well occupies twenty-five pages in the folio of 1623, viz., from p. 230 to p. 254, inclusive, in the division of Comedies. It is there divided into Acts and Scenes, but has no list of Dramatis Personæ, which it was left for Rowe to supply. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. INTRODUCTION. BOCCACCIO first gave the story of this comedy a place in literature. It is the Ninth Novel of the Third Day of the Decameron. Paynter translated it for his Palace of Pleasure, which was published, the first volume in 1566 and the second in 1567. In that work the argument of the tale is thus given : "Giletta, a phisician's doughter of Narbon, healed the Frenche kyng of a fistula, for reward wherof she demaunded Beltramo, counte of Rossiglione, to husbande. The counte, beyng maried againste his will, for despite fled to Florence, and loved another. Giletta, his wife, by pollicie founde meanes to lye with her husbande, in place of his lover, and was begotten with child of two soonnes: whiche, knowen to her husbande, he received her againe, and afterwardes he lived in greate honor and felicitie." Shakespeare followed the novelist in all respects, and preserved two of the names in the original tale, Bertram, Count of Roussillon, and Gerarde of Narbon. But he changed the name of the heroine to Helena; and Mr. Collier has suggested that he did so "probably because he had already made Juliet the name of one of his heroines." This, however, is to assume that Romeo and Juliet was produced before All's Well that Ends Well. To the characters in Boccaccio's story Shakespeare added the Countess, Parolles, the Clown, Lafeu, and other minor person • This is rather a paraphrase than a translation of Boccaccio's argument, which here follows: "Giglietta di Nerbona guarisce il Re di Francia d'una fistola; domanda per marito Beltramo di Rossiglione; il quale contra sua voglia sposatala, a Firenze se ne va per isdegno; dove vagheggiando una giovane, in persona di lei Giglietta giacque con lui, e hebbene due figlioli; perchè egli po! havutala cara per moglie la tiene." Paynter's version is given by Mr. Collier in his Shakespeare's Library. ages, their functions being, of course, entirely imposed by him; and for the substance of his play, the flesh with which he clothed the skeleton that he took at second hand from the father of Italian fiction, he appears to have been indebted to the story only for one or two suggestions. The incidents of the novel being all embodied in the play, and the progress of the two being the same, there are yet certain differences between them which are worthy of notice. The heroine of the tale is rich as well as fatherless: she of the play is a poor dependant, and is thus placed in a situation from which the haughty young noble would be the more unwilling to accept a wife. The King in the tale grants his preserver's demand for the Count Beltramo "to husbande" very reluctantly, and only for his oath sake: but the King in the play, with all his devotion to the memory of Bertram's father, and his fondness for the son, seems to think that Helena is more than worthy of the latter in all respects, except that of rank — a disparity which can easily be obviated; and this enhances our estimation of her, and begets for her some much-needed sympathy in the unwomanly stratagems by which she seeks to obtain a husband and to be made a mother. In the tale there is no hint of the martial spirit of Bertram, and he joins the Florentine army only to escape his wife in the play he yearns for military glory before the arrival of Helena at Paris, where he frets at "creaking his shoes on the plain masonry;" and thus Shakespeare wins for a character full of moral failings an admiration which, blent with our compassion for a man who is pursued by a woman determined to make him her husband in name and in reality, whether he will or no, becomes a passport to our favor. In the tale the heroine, on arriving at Rossiglione, administers her husband's estate, which had fallen into decay, with great ability: but this incident, valueless for dramatic purposes, is made unnecessary in the play by the presence at Rousillon of the Dowager Countess and her Steward; and in the tale, too, the heroine, instead of slipping stealthily off on her pretended pilgrimage, calls together the Count's vassals and makes a formal matter of her departure. The reappearance of the heroine in the tale with two stout boys is modified for the better in the play by showing her to the Count in a condition which would lead him to expect but one: but it is difficult to discover why Shakespeare added the incident of a projected second marriage on Bertram's part; unless it |