ABSTRACT
The subject of genre in All’s Well has proven a very knotty problem for critics. In his introduction to this volume, Gary Waller reveals the extent to which the play has been subjected to harsh appraisals over the centuries and some much needed revaluation in recent decades. Much of the traditional criticism focused on the play’s “problematic” qualities, specifically on its failure to be faithful to the conventions of romantic comedy. These interrogations have gleaned much insight, but they have also lead to a rigid view of the play as isolated and idiosyncratic. What this essay seeks to do is the opposite, to place All’s Well firmly into a mythic tradition that can help clarify (or at least structure) the play’s notoriously intractable generic elements. The principle movement in mid-twentieth-century genre-criticism of Renaissance comedy, under the influence of Northrop Frye, was to identify the festive and mythic resonance in plays.1 Seemingly, the play bites its thumb at the festive comic tradition. However, perhaps the play is not so antagonistic; it perhaps simply belongs to a very particular kind of festive lineage.
