How All's Well That Ends Well drew on The Decameron
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Giovanni Boccaccio’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio · c. 1351
MedievalThe influenced
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare · c. 1604
ShakespeareRelevance
9/10
On All's Well That Ends Well’s page
- The entire plot comes straight from one of Boccaccio's tales — Giletta di Narbona, Decameron Day 3, Novella 9
- The king's cure, the rejected husband, the bed-trick: Shakespeare took them whole from Boccaccio via William Painter's English Palace of Pleasure
- Read the source tale and you see exactly what Shakespeare kept, and what he darkened into something stranger
On The Decameron’s page
- Boccaccio's tale of Giletta di Narbona (Day 3, Novella 9) is the whole skeleton of All's Well — the king's miraculous cure, the spurned husband, the bed-trick
- Shakespeare reached it through William Painter's English Palace of Pleasure, the standard route for Italian tales into Elizabethan drama
- One of the Decameron's stories handed Shakespeare a complete, ready-made plot