All's Well That Ends Well Study Guide

All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is often considered one of his problem plays, not easily classifiable as a comedy or tragedy. It was probably written in the later middle part of Shakespeare's career, between 1601 and 1608.

Act I

• 'T were all oneThat I should love a bright particular star,

  And think to wed it.

  • Helena, scene i

• The hind, that would be mated by the lion,Must die for love.
  • Helena, scene i

• Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,Which we ascribe to Heaven.
  • Helena, scene i

• His good remembrance, sir,Lies richer in your thoughts, than on his tomb;

  So in approof lives not his epitaph,

  As in your royal speech.

  • Bertram, scene ii

• Service is no heritage.
  • Clown, scene iii

• He must needs go, that the devil drives.
  • Clown, scene iii

• Even so it was with me, when I was young:If we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn

  Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong:

  Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;

  It is the show and seal of nature’s truth,

  Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth:

  By our remembrances of days foregone,

  Such were our faults;— or then we thought them none.

  Her eye is sick on’t: I observe her now.

  • Countess of Rousillon, scene iii

• My friends were poor, but honest.
  • Helena, scene iii

Act II

• Great floods have flownFrom simple sources; and great seas have dried,

  When miracles have by the greatest been denied.

  Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

  Where most it promises.

  • Helena, scene i

• I will show myself highly fed, and lowly taught.
  • Clown, scene ii

• They say, miracles are past.
  • Lafeu, scene iii

• All the learned and authentic fellows.
  • Lafeu, scene iii

• From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,The place is dignified by the doer’s deed.
  • King of France, scene iii

• A young man, married, is a man that’s marr’d.
  • Parolles, scene iii

• Make the coming hour o’erflow with joy,And pleasure drown the brim.
  • Parolles, scene iv

Act III

• No legacy is so rich as honesty.
  • Mariana, scene v

Act IV

• The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
  • 1st Lord, scene iii

• Simply the thing I amShall make me live.
  • Parolles, scene iii

• All's well that ends well still: the fine's the crown;Whate'er the course, the end is the renown.
  • Helena, scene iv

Act V

• Whose words all ears took captive.
  • Lafeu, scene iii

• Praising what is lost,Makes the remembrance dear.
  • King of France, scene iii

• For we are old, and on our quick'st decreesThe inaudible and noiseless foot of time

  Steals, ere we can effect them.

  • King of France, scene iii

• All impediments in fancy’s courseAre motives of more fancy.
  • Bertram, scene iii

• 'T is but the shadow of a wife you see,The name and not the thing.
  • Helena, scene iii

• The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.
  • King of France, scene iii