书名：All’s Well That Ends Well  终成眷属
作者：William Shakespeare威廉·莎士比亚
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2005
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451530011
商品尺寸：10.6 x1.8 x 17.3 cm
包装：简装
页数：288 （以实物为准）

All’s Well That Ends Well《终成眷属》是莎士比亚创作于第二时期的作品，这部作品写美丽而有才干的女主人公如何费尽心机去争取一个出身高贵、狂妄肤浅的纨绔子弟的爱情。在这里，弥漫在早期喜剧中的欢乐气氛和乐观情绪已经消失，相反地出现了背信弃义、尔虞我诈的罪恶阴影。
在民间故事里，常见出身低微的青年斩妖屠魔之后，国王就把美丽的公主许配给他。《终成眷属》的内容与此类似。只是智勇双全的主角变成了女性，后来的奖赏则变成了男性。本剧的一个特点是性别角色与传统有所不同。明显的例子是女主角艾莲娜猛追自己心仪的男子。另外。长者的角色也不同于以往。在莎翁早期作品如《仲夏夜之梦》和《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中。长者都是年轻情侣恋爱的主要障碍，但到了本剧，剧中长者展现的却是慈爱包容。萧伯纳甚至认为，剧中的伯爵夫人，是西方的戏剧故事中完美的老妇人。莎翁撰写本剧时，两个女儿正逢适婚年龄。因此家庭成员对婚姻的影响力，在他的剧作里就愈形彰显。从这个角度来看。本剧还视为标志着莎翁将人物重心，逐渐转移到年长世代的过度期。
本书为Signet Classics推出的英文原版修订版，对莎士比亚生平作了介绍，同时提供序言、评论、注释等。内容完整无删减，书本小巧便携，适合英语学习者及对经典英国文学作品、莎士比亚系列作品感兴趣的读者。

One of Shakespeare’s most thought-provoking comedies in which high-born Lord Bertram learns humility and the true worth of his wife.

All’s Well That Ends Well has generally been considered one of Shakespeare’s most difficult and unpopular plays. Labelled a “Problem Comedy”, editors believe that the play was written between 1604 and 1605, and exhibits a darkening of Shakespeare’s interest in comedy. The play deals with the complicated relationship between Helena, the daughter of a famous physician, and Bertram, the arrogant son of the Countess of Roussillon. Helena is secretly in love with Bertram, and when she miraculously cures the ailing King, she asks for Bertram’s hand in marriage, to which the grateful sovereign happily agrees. Bertram bitterly opposes marriage to Helena, who he regards as a social inferior. After reluctantly agreeing to the marriage, Bertram flees to the wars in Italy with his companion Parolles. 
What ensues is Helena’s increasingly desperate and complex attempts to retrieve her errant husband, which involves various machinations and a piece of mistaken identity and an infamous “bed-trick” which has never fully convinced audiences or critics. More recently critics have been kinder to the play, seeing its cynical disillusionment with romance as reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties about warfare and commerce, and feminist critics have been keen to celebrate Helena as a particularly complex heroine. The play is also fascinated by language, encapsulated in the character of Parolles (or “words”), and his memorable line for which the play is chiefly remembered: “Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live”.— Jerry Brotton 

Review
“A remarkable edition, one that makes Shakespeare’s extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever.”  — James Shapiro, professor, Columbia University, bestselling author of A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599
“A feast of literary and historical information.”  — The Wall Street Journal

威廉·莎士比亚（1564-1616）是英国文艺复兴时期伟大的戏剧家和诗人，也是欧洲文艺复兴时期人文主义文学的集大成者，近代欧洲文学的奠基人之一。他共写有37部戏剧，154首14行诗，两首长诗和其他诗歌。代表作有四大悲剧：《哈姆雷特》《奥赛罗》《李尔王》《麦克白》。四大喜剧：《第十二夜》《仲夏夜之梦》《威尼斯商人》《皆大欢喜》。历史剧：《亨利四世》《亨利六世》《理查二世》等。
他是“英国戏剧之父”，本·琼斯称他为“时代的灵魂”，被称为“人类文学奥林匹斯山上的宙斯”。
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a poet, playwright, and actor who is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. Often referred to as the Bard of Avon, Shakespeare’s vast body of work includes comedic, tragic, and historical plays; poems; and 154 sonnets. His dramatic works have been translated into every major language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Act 1 Scene 1 running scene 1
Enter young Bertram, [the] Count of Rossillion, his mother [the Countess], and Helena, Lord Lafew, all in black
COUNTESS  In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.
BERTRAM And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s death anew; but I must attend his majesty’s command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.
LAFEW  You shall find of the king a husband, madam, you, sir, a father. He that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you, whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather than lack it where there is such abundance.
COUNTESS  What hope is there of his majesty’s amendment?
LAFEW He hath abandoned his physicians, madam, under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.
COUNTESS This young gentlewoman had a father— O, that ‘had’! How sad a passage ’tis!— whose skill was almost as great as his honesty, had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would for the king’s sake he were living! I think it would be the death of the king’s disease.
LAFEW  How called you the man you speak of, madam?
COUNTESS  He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon.
LAFEW He was excellent indeed, madam. The king very lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly: he was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.
BERTRAM  What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?
LAFEW A fistula, my lord.
BERTRAM I heard not of it before.
LAFEW I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
COUNTESS  His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer. For where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity, they are virtues and traitors too. In her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness.
LAFEW  Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.
COUNTESS  'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena. Go to, no more, lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have.
HELEN I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.
LAFEW  Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
COUNTESS  If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.
BERTRAM  Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
LAFEW  How understand we that?