ABSTRACT
The production of All's Well that Ends Well is one of the least admired and least documented of the thirty-one Shakespeare plays Samuel Phelps mounted at Sadler's Wells during his management of the theatre from 1844–62. George Odell, in his Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving [1], notes that the play was performed but makes no other comment; John Coleman, in his biography of Phelps, explains that he did not see it [2]; and that confused, patch-work, but indispensable Phelps source-book, The Life and Life-Work of Samuel Phelps [3], only mentions the play in passing. The most detailed reports of the production in recent years have been supplied by Harold Child, in the stage history he contributed to the Cambridge edition, and by Professor Joseph Price, in his excellent study of the play, The Unfortunate Comedy [4]. It was not one of Phelps's striking productions: it did not attract great audiences, it was not presented with expensive scenic splendour, nor was it a revival that others quickly sought to emulate. Yet it commands interest as the only major production accorded the play on the Victorian professional stage; and further, of all Phelps's Shakespeare repertory this was, in its unspectacular way, perhaps the bravest and most adventurous production that he undertook. By the time that All's Well was produced in 1852, in Phelps's ninth season at Sadler's Wells, he had firmly established the policy that was to make his eighteen years at Islington a repertory achievement unique in the history of the British theatre. Following the example of his former manager Macready, Phelps had partially restored the Shakespeare Folio readings in a series of splendid and scholarly productions, most notable of which were Macbeth and Richard III, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra. Going beyond the mere restoration of texts, he had brought back to the stage several 180of Shakespeare's plays which had long since fallen out of the repertory: the season before All's Well was produced, the Sadler's Wells company had given Timon of Athens its first presentation for more than two hundred years, and All's Well was quickly to be followed by a play equally unfamiliar to the playhouses, Henry IV Part II. Nor was the repertory of revivals solely Shakespearean, for the company had performed adaptations of, among others, The City Madam, The Fatal Dowry, A King and No King, The Maid's Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi.
