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A review by andrew_j_r
All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
4.0
I have decided to read all of the Shakespeare plays. There are several orders in which you can read them, I did consider the order in which they were written, but decided in the end to go for alphabetical order, as presented in the recent Folio Society folio edition of the complete plays.
My method is this: I watch the relevant BBC Shakespeare adaptation (they recorded every play between 1978 and 1985, this has been released as a large box set) and read along with my folio edition. Once I know the story, I will read the Oxford Shakespeare version of the play, which is the version I will review.
All’s Well That Ends Well is not a story that I was familiar with before this. The Oxford Shakespeare gives a huge amount of fascinating detail about its background, for example, contextual information about when it was written, and the sources material of the play. I did not know that this was based on a story published in 1575 (which is included in the book.) The research that has gone into this is incredible. As an example, there are two characters that are listed by different names in different acts, and it is not known if this is due to bad labelling or that they were actually several different characters. This book explains how the editors came to draw certain conclusions about who was who.
There is also a line that appears to be in the wrong place (with explanations of why that might be, where it maybe should have been, and what it may mean if the line is actually in the right place after all!) The book even talks about where straight lines and poetic lines seem to have become jumbled in the edit (the text is the same just how they are presented on the page) and it appears it was to make the page fill up more space (poems take up more room) to ensure it matched where the next page started (often being put together by a different typesetter!)
So the play is interesting (I ended up watching two versions on DVD) and the background material is fascinating. 36 (or 37!!) to go.
My method is this: I watch the relevant BBC Shakespeare adaptation (they recorded every play between 1978 and 1985, this has been released as a large box set) and read along with my folio edition. Once I know the story, I will read the Oxford Shakespeare version of the play, which is the version I will review.
All’s Well That Ends Well is not a story that I was familiar with before this. The Oxford Shakespeare gives a huge amount of fascinating detail about its background, for example, contextual information about when it was written, and the sources material of the play. I did not know that this was based on a story published in 1575 (which is included in the book.) The research that has gone into this is incredible. As an example, there are two characters that are listed by different names in different acts, and it is not known if this is due to bad labelling or that they were actually several different characters. This book explains how the editors came to draw certain conclusions about who was who.
There is also a line that appears to be in the wrong place (with explanations of why that might be, where it maybe should have been, and what it may mean if the line is actually in the right place after all!) The book even talks about where straight lines and poetic lines seem to have become jumbled in the edit (the text is the same just how they are presented on the page) and it appears it was to make the page fill up more space (poems take up more room) to ensure it matched where the next page started (often being put together by a different typesetter!)
So the play is interesting (I ended up watching two versions on DVD) and the background material is fascinating. 36 (or 37!!) to go.