Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: / with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on a Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris dance.

by Francis Douce

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See Hume's hist. of the houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, folio, p. 356. There are good reasons for supposing that the instrument in question was invented in Germany.

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[ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.]

In the dramatis personæ of this play the "gentle astringer" is omitted, who, though he says but little, has a better claim to be inserted than Violenta, who says nothing. Mr. Steevens remarks that her name was borrowed from an old metrical history entitled Didaco and Violenta; but Shakspeare more probably saw it in the running title of Painter's Palace of pleasure, whence he got his plot of this play, and where the above history occurs in prose. The title is borrowed from a proverbial saying much older than the time of Shakspeare. Knyghton has preserved some of the speeches of Jack Straw and his brother insurgents; and in that of Jack Carter we have this expression: for if the ende be wele than is alle wele. The orations of these heroes were made up of proverbial saws, a proof of the great influence they must have had with the common people. See the Decem scriptores by Twysden, col. 2637.