Source: "All's Well That Ends Well," in The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by J. J. M. Tobin, Herschel Baker, and G. Blakemore Evans, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997, pp. 499-503.

[In this brief essay Barton postulates that the plot if All's Well That Ends Well was nothing out of the ordinary in its day- similar folk motifs and story elements could be found in the literature if other languages and in literature of the past. Barton demonstrates haw Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well was strongly influenced by an English translation of Boccaccio's story if Giletta if Narbona in his Decameron, noting the similarities and especially the differences between Helena and Giletta and Bertram and Beltramo. Barton also discusses the play's nostalgia for the past and the notion if honor as they pertain to the play's main characters.]

The plot of All's Well That Ends Well is a tissue of...