Some Textual Implications of Tyrone Guthrie's 1953 Production of All's Well That Ends Well

Abstract

jB HE Folio text of All's Well That Ends Well, if not quite so dvile as Quiller-Couch asserts, is certainly unsatisfactory in a number of ways. There are gaps in the text, missing stage directions, incorrectly assigned speech-headings, and an unusual degree of variation in the nomenclature of the characters. Since the Folio is also, unfortunately, the only source for the text of the play, a modern editor is presented with a number of particularly vexing problems. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should be considerable disagreement about the way in which the Folio text should be improved for the twentieth-century reader. For example, one short passage of dialogue between Lafew and Parolles (II. iii. 10-38) is divided between the speakers five ways in as many modern editions. Similarly, a stage direction necessary to describe the movements of the King in Act II, scene one (but missing from the Folio) is rendered differently in every one of the six paperback editions of the play now available.2 Such diversity is perhaps inevitable given the nature of the problem. Nor is it altogether unhealthy, providing the deviations from the Folio text are clearly marked and the reasons for them defended. Unfortunately, however, this is not always the case. Changes are sometimes introduced without comment and stage directions inserted with unwarranted authority. Furthermore, when justification is attempted, it is frequently based on purely theoretical arguments. Encouraged perhaps by E. M. W. Tillyard's cheerful admission in Shakespeare's Problem Plays that he had never seen All's Well,3 the editors whom I have consulted have apparently considered it unnecessary to refer in any detail to an actual theatrical production of the play. The result is that many of the assumptions upon which their editorial decisions are based remain untested in practice. just such a test is provided in the prompt-book of All's Well used in the