ll's Well that End's Well was first published in the folio of 1623,
and is among the worst-printed plays in that volume. In many places
the text, as there given, is in a most unsatisfactory state; and in
not a few I fear it must be pronounced incurably at fault. A vast deal
of study and labour has been spent in trying to rectify the numerous
errors; nearly all the editors and commentators, from Rowe downwards,
have strained their faculties upon the work: many instances of
corruption have indeed yielded to critical ingenuity and perseverance,
and it is to be hoped that still others may; but yet there are several
passages which give little hope of success, and seem indeed too hard
for any efforts of corrective sagacity and skill. This is not the
place for citing examples of textual difficulty: so I must be content
with referring to Dyce's elaborate annotation on the play.

Why the original printing of this play should thus have been
exceptionally bad, is a matter about which we can only speculate; and
as in such cases speculation can hardly lead to any firm result,
probably our best way is to note the textual corruption as a fact, and
there let it rest. Still it may be worth the while to observe on this
head, that in respect of plot and action the piece is of a somewhat
forbidding, not to say repulsive nature; and though it abounds in
wisdom, and is not wanting in poetry, and has withal much choice
delineation of character, and contains scenes which stream down with
the Poet's raciest English, yet it is not among the plays which
readers are often drawn to by mere recollections of delight: one does
not take to it heartily, and can hardly admire it without something of
effort: even when it wins our approval, it seems to do so rather
through our sense of right than through our sense of pleasure: in
short, I have to confess that the perusal is more apt to inspire an
apologetic than an enthusiastic tone of mind. It may be a mere fancy
of mine; but I have often thought that the extreme badness of the
printing may have been partly owing to this cause; that the Poet may
have left the manuscript in a more unfinished and illegible state,
from a sense of something ungenial and unattractive in the
subject-matter and action of the play.

* * * * *

No direct and certain contemporary notice of _All's Well that Ends
Well_ has come down to us. But the often-quoted list of Shakespeare's
plays set forth by