SOURCE: "All's Well That Ends Well: Shakespeare's Play of Endings," in Essays in Criticism, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, January, 1977, pp. 34-55.

In the following essay, Donaldson examines the numerous "endings" throughout the play, and argues that All's Well That Ends Well is more complex than it first seems.

All's well that ends well; still the fine's the crown.
 Whate'er the course, the end is the renown.

(IV.iv.35-6)

There is some irony in the fact that a play which so often reminds us of the importance of ending well should itself end in a way which has given unease to many of its commentators. Dr. Johnson could account for the ending of All's Well That Ends Well only in terms of an artistic impatience which he believed often overtook Shakespeare in the closing stages of a work:

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the...