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Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.

Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight,

And brought with armed men back to Messina. Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow: I'll devise thee brave punishments for him. up, pipers.

Strike
Exeunt.

126. tipped with horn, i.e. with a horn ferrule.

130

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

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COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, mother to Bertram.

HELENA, a gentlewoman protected by the Countess.
An old Widow of Florence.

DIANA, daughter to the Widow.

VIOLENTA,

MARIANA,

} neighbours and friends to the Widow.

Lords, Officers, Soldiers, etc., French and Florentine.

SCENE: Rousillon; Paris; Florence; Marseilles.

Dramatis Persona. In Ff Rousillon commonly appears as Rossillion, Helena as Hellen.

INTRODUCTION

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL was first printed in the Folio of 1623. It is there divided into acts, but not into scenes. The printing is careless, and the text offers many problems. External clues to the date are wholly wanting. No early performance is recorded; no early mention of the play had been found. The internal evidence is complicated. Coleridge was the first .to insist upon the sharp inequalities of style, which point to a partial revision by Shakespeare of an earlier piece of his own, much of which he retained intact. Side by side with the supple, sinewy dramatic verse of the Hamlet period, we have speeches full of the lyrical sweetness and the dainty artifice of the earliest comedies, with a singular abundance of rhyme. The mere use of rhyme tells us little, and the so-called 'rhyme-test' is almost useless as a guide to date. For two purposes, at least, Shakespeare continued to use it as late as Othello. It marks a sudden lyrical exaltation (as in Beatrice's outburst, Much Ado, iii. 1. 107 f.) or sententious reflections (as in the moral conclusions of the duke and Brabantio in Othello, i. 3. 198-219). On the other hand, its use in ordinary dialogue, or in letters, is characteristic of plays not later than 1595.

Some of the rhymed passages in our play which

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