The Oxford Shakespeare: All's Well that Ends Well (Oxford World's Classics)

by WilliamShakespeare (Author), SusanSnyder (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $4.72

  Usually classifed as a 'problem comedy', All's Well that Ends Well invites a fresh assessment. Its psychologically disturbing presentation of an agressive, designing woman and a reluctant husband wooed by trickery won it little favour in earlier centuries, and both directors and critics have frequently tried to avoid or simplify its uncomfortable elements. More recently, several distinguished productions have revealed it as an exceptionally penetrating study of both personal and social issues. In her introduction Susan Snyder makes the play's clashing ideologies of class and gender newly accessible. She explains how the very discords of style can be seen as a source of theatrical power and complexity, and offers a fully reconsidered, helpfully annotated text for both readers and actors.

• Used

  Paperback
  1978

  $3.27

  The Cambridge School Shakespeare Series approaches the plays in a new way, by encouraging students to actively examine them, working in groups as well as individually, and to treat them as scripts to be re-created, with theatrical and dramatic qualities to explore.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $13.91

  For this updated edition of All's Well, Alexander Leggatt has written a wholly new Introduction to one of Shakespeare's most puzzling, ambiguous and demanding plays. Leggatt's interest in performance informs his introduction and his account of the instability of the main characters. He offers a full, illustrated and thoughtful account of the play's critical and theatrical fortunes to the end of the twentieth century, and of our experience as an audience of seeing and hearing it performed. An updated reading list completes the edition.