“Yet in His Idle Fire:” Once More unto the Bertram and All’s Well

Thomas Clayton

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.29.07

Authors

Thomas Clayton University of Minnesota, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.29.07

Keywords:

All’s Well That Ends Well, Bertram, festive comedy, fertility rites, page versus stage

Abstract

As a bitter comedy, a dark comedy, and a problem play (all of these so-called), All’s Well has suffered both neglect in the theater for most of its post-creation existence, and vilification from critics for over two centuries, especially in the twentieth. As a result, it is seldom taught and therefore even less often read. More’s the pity, since the real All’s Well is a most entertaining and otherwise rewarding play to experience in the theater and in the study, and far above its traditional status as a disappointment and even “a seedy, seamy affair.” The conventional misreadings center on Bertram, the notorious bed-trick, the ending, and the tonality of the whole. The purpose here is to set these to rights and Helena into perspective as the script seems to present them, and identify this play as a special kind of near-romantic comedy that manages its dramatic vicissitudes so well that All’s Well ends well indeed.

Author Biography

Thomas Clayton, University of Minnesota, USA

Thomas Swoverland Clayton (1932-2023) was Regents Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, and a scholar of Shakespeare, seventeenth-century British Literature and the Classics. He graduated the University of Minnesota summa cum laude in English and Latin and earned his D.Phil. in English Literature at Oxford, in 1960. He taught at Yale and UCLA and continued his teaching career at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for forty-seven years. Professor Clayton’s main academic area was textual criticism and his chief works are the Oxford English Text edition of The Works of Sir John Suckling: The Non Dramatic Works (1971); the Oxford Standard Edition of The Cavalier Poets: Selected Poems (1978); The “Hamlet” First Published (Q1, 1603): Origins, Form, Intertextualities (1992); The “Shakespearean” Addition in “The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore:” Some Aids to Scholarly and Critical Shakespearean Studies (1969); and many editorial and critical essays on William Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, and John Suckling. Professor Clayton received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Morse-Amoco Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education, the Morse-Alumni Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education, and the Regents Professorship from the University of Minnesota in 1999.

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