king of France she reminds him of
his promise, shows his ring in her possession, and states that she is
with child by him. The count, outwitted, and in fear of the king's
wrath, repentantly accepts her as his wife; and at the end Helena is
expected to live happily forever after.

Disagreeable as the plot is when told in outline, it is redeemed in the
actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this,
while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only
increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and
admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part
which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end
her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the
world-old bitterness of pearls before swine.

+Date+.--No quarto of this comedy exists, nor is there any mention of
such a play as _All's Well That Ends Well_ before the publication of
the First Folio in 1623. A play of Shakespeare's called _Love's
Labour's Won_ is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598; and many think
that this was the present comedy under another name. However, the
meter, style, and mood of most of the play seem to indicate a later
date. The {176} most common theory is that a first version was written
before 1598, and that this was rewritten in the early part of the
author's third period. This would put the date of the play in its
present form somewhere around 1602.

+Sources+.--The story is taken from Boccaccio's _Decameron_ (ninth
novel of the third day). It was translated into English by Painter in
his _Palace of Pleasure_, where our author probably read it.
Shakespeare has added the Countess, Parolles, and one or two minor
characters. The conception of the heroine has been greatly ennobled.
It is a question whether the bitter tone of the play is due to the
dramatist's intention or is the unforeseen result of reducing
Boccaccio's improbable story to a living possibility.

+Measure for Measure+.--When Hamlet told his guilty mother that he
would set her up a glass where she might see the inmost part of her, he
was doing for his mother what Shakespeare in _Measure for Measure_ is
doing for the lust-spotted world. The play is a trenchant satire on
the evils of society. Such realistic pictures of the things that are,
but should not be, have always jarred on our aesthetic sense from
Aristophanes to Zola, and _Measure for Measure_ is on