By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
George Bernard Shaw held All’s Well That Ends Well in high regard, having what Frank Kermode described as a ‘perverse’ admiration for it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called Helena, the heroine of All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare’s ‘loveliest character’ while the Victorian actress Ellen Terry called her ‘despicable’ and a ‘doormat’. Samuel Johnson went so far as to compare Parolles, the play’s chief comic character, with the mighty Falstaff.