All's Well That Ends Well Themes

All's Well That Ends Well is all about challenging traditional sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ideas about gender and sexuality. By featuring a female protagonist who takes on a traditionally ma...

All's Well That Ends Well has a reputation for being one of Shakespeare's most sexually charged dramas. In the play, female sexuality is under constant scrutiny; the question of when and how a woma...

Forget about family lineage, wealth, and inherited social rank. All's Well That Ends Well is a "tale of fantastic upward mobility." At least that's how Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber describe...

According to the rules and conventions of Shakespearean comedy, holy matrimony is what's supposed to make everything turn out well in the end. But in All's Well That Ends Well, a man is forced into...

From the opening lines of All's Well That Ends Well, death, illness, and decay loom over the characters like a dark cloud. Two fathers are dead, the king of France is ill, and an entire court is in...

Family drama is par for the course in Shakespearean comedy, which is why All's Well That Ends Well often reads like a daytime soap opera. Parents betray children, kids fail to live up to their pare...

Much like Romeo and Juliet, All's Well That Ends Well is interested in the generation gap between young and old. In this play, young men tend to be careless and shallow and the older generation wor...

Deception and mystery are all over in All's Well That Ends Well. The play is full of riddles to be solved (like the king's strange illness, Helen's supposed death, and the mystery of the two rings)...