Comedy · c. 1605

Shakespeare’s All's Well That Ends Well

Helena, a physician’s daughter, cures the King and claims her reward: marriage to Bertram, the count she loves and who wants nothing to do with her.

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By the Seven Ages editors2 min read

He flees to the wars, setting impossible conditions for accepting her; she sets about meeting them, on her own terms and by morally interesting means.

A problem play with a fairy-tale skeleton and startlingly real people attached — plus Parolles, a coward whose unmasking scene is a small masterpiece. The title is a question pretending to be a proverb; the ending keeps it a question.

All's Well That Ends Well on screen

1All's Well That Ends Well (1981)

TV film · dir. Elijah Moshinsky

BBC Television Shakespeare

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