Talk:All's Well That Ends Well

message: Is this really one of Shakespeare's most unpopular plays?  What about Titus Andronicus?  What about Henry VI?  What about Pericles?  What do y'all think?
I have a little concern about the listing of Shakespeare's plays... Although Romeo and Juliet does have the word "tragedy" in the title, and it is often thought of as a tragedy, I think it is actually considered a comedy by the strictest definition of terms... What do you think? :Simon 18:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popularity 

message: My grammar is getting a little rusty  but does this edit need a verb, rather than a past participle used adverbially? The intent of the change is for the better. --Old Moonraker (talk) 07:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Auxiliary verbs added.--Old Moonraker (talk) 07:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Believed" with past participle 

message: "the earliest occurred in 1741 ... while the actor playing the King of France subsequently died" - the rest of the cast are presumably still alive?  This vague and woolly paragraph confuses more than it explains about the play.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Heenan73 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Expanded, to give the circumstances. --Old Moonraker (talk) 15:35, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Performance History

message: There is no discussion of the date of the play here' as withbother plays. And no given my previous experiences as sn editor I can't be bothered tondo it myself but thought I'd point it out. 95.29.106.8 (talk) 13:46, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  No indication of date 

message: On what standard is wikipedia deciding what's too long when there are longer wikipedia pages on more trivial matters than a Shakespeare play?  Is the shortening of the synopsis here a consensus decision, or the actions of one person?
(Full disclosure: I'm miffed that my long synopsis was deleted.  There was absolutely no public-internet detailed synopsis of the play, so I created one. It stood for years.  It was long but accurate.  I have a degree in English Lit, and I got help from Emma Smith from Oxford, who checked it for accuracy and intelligibility)
Here are the four plays closest to All's Well That Ends Well by length, and their current wikipedia synopsis lengths:
* Romeo and Juliet: ~629 word synopsis
* Henry VI, Part III: ~1042 word synopsis
* AWTEW goes here by actual length
* Richard II: ~593 word synopsis
* Merry Wives of Windsor: ~1032 word synopsis
The new shortened version of the AWTEW synopsis: ~390 words
Current AWTEW analysis and criticism section: ~627 words
Previous capsule summary: ~335 words
My previous full synopsis: ~2196 words
Was it long? Yes.  Is the new one short? Yes.  But there's a quality question beyond that.  I'll leave you to judge the quality of the new one for yourselves, but at minimum it editorializes ("Thus all ends well") and it leaves Paroles to the end of the section.  More to my point, across all of Shakespeare-on-wikipedia, how are the pages stronger for having short synopses?  Why not a capsule summary and a full synopsis?  I just don't see any point in saving space on matters as concrete as a detailed synopsis of what actually happens in the plays, which is at least as important as the analysis and criticism section.
73mmmm (talk) 09:41, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: All content decisions on Wikipedia are made by consensus. Establishing consensus can be achieved many ways, but one commonly adopted method is the bold—revert—discuss method: an editor makes a change they believe beneficial, another disagrees (signaling it by reverting the previous change), and all interested parties then discuss the matter on the article's talk page until a consensus is formed. The link gives more details on the method and its pros and cons, but one main goal of it is that changes can be made directly without needing long discussions first. In most cases this is desireable. In a typical case a change is made and nobody objects, signalling an implied consensus in favour of the change; and when someone does object, the change is easily reverted and the discussion can happen only when actually needed.As to the length of the plot summary, there is no bright-line rule, but one commonly cited guideline is the subject-specific guide for plot summaries for films. It is not always a good fit, and so needs to be applied with some nuance, but it is a good rule of thumb to start with. That being said, Shakespeare's plays typically have a much more convoluted plot than your average modern mainstream film, and so it is often necessary to have a longer plot summary. An extreme example of this is Hamlet.Now I do agree with you that we should not be quite so afraid of long plot summaries, so long as we avoid the sort of "fancruft" that tends to sneak in on articles on popular culture subjects (think the Twilight movies or the Marvel franchise); but the concern for the reader should still weigh heavily. Wikipedia articles are an overview of the subject and needs to cover all aspects in somewhat comparable proportion. If the plot summary becomes excessive it will unbalance the article and be off-putting to the reader.All that being said, if you think you can further improve the plot summary then you should feel free to do so. If you believe the change will be controversial then opening a discussion here first may be a good idea, but it should include some specific proposal (not just an abstract discussion of length limits) so interested editors have something concrete to assess. I haven't looked at the current plot summary, nor read the previous one in a long time, so I don't have any immediate opinion on their relative merits.PS. There are about 1500 Shakespeare-related arti cles on Wikipedia, and most of them are in dire need of improvement, but only a very small handful of editors who regularly work in the area. If this is your field or a subject that interests you, even small contributions could have a huge positive impact on our coverage of Shakespeare. By my own observation (others may disagree) we are particularly weak on critical approaches and literary criticism in general in the play articles (and almost completely blank on gender studies, feminist, and queer theory approaches). --Xover (talk) 10:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: A stylistic rule 73mmmm could not live with and he left shortly after.  For others it is a good example of where a short plot summary is better than a longer more accurate summary.  You need to go to February 20, 2019 in the article history to see the two summaries where over 12K bytes are deleted by Bitwixen. Eschoryii (talk) 19:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please comment on the edits, not the editor. I encourage you to strike your first sentence above. --Xover (talk) 08:52, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Why are you offended? This talk page is a good example of the issue of short or long plot summaries. It is not personal to anyone.  The long summary was deleted and the editor who wrote it stopped editing.  Facts and relevant to this talk page as set forth above.  Many editors leave when their work is rejected especially when they use their own expertise and not use referenced material.  A problem for new editors.  This talk page is a good example of editing and consensus making.Eschoryii (talk) 12:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not offended. I am merely reminding you of our policy and asking you politely to retract the policy violation in your previous statement. Because when next the editor to whom you directed the comment comes by here (as they have indicated they may intermittently do) they may be offended, and may decide they no longer wish to contribute to such a project. And the same for any new potential contributor who reads it and decides that this is not the place for them. That's not "a problem for new editors"; that's a problem for Wikipedia. --Xover (talk) 17:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree with any stylistic rule you may be invoking here, and your fundamental approach to wikipedia.  I defy you to find a Shakespeare page that has a reference for the synopsis besides the primary text, and I fail to see the relevance of most of what you've said here.  You're grinding an axe for your love of grinding an axe.  I don't edit wikipedia much, mostly because of wikipedians like you who come off as inner-circle, pointlessly snobbish, passive-aggressive assholes.   is entirely right that I don't care to contribute due to this kind of rudeness in the service of byzantine nonsense. 73mmmm (talk) 09:23, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I am no insider.Eschoryii (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who decides whether a synopsis is too long or too short? 

message: This article, when listing the play's characters, refers "the Countess  of Roussilon" (sic.). This is the wrong spelling of Rousillon, as in the Shakespeare play, it has one s and two ls. YTKJ (talk) 10:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Correct apelling of "Rousillon"

message: The first paragraph of this section contains an opinion statement. 
'Helena's love for the seemingly unlovable Bertram is difficult to explain on the page, but in performance, it can be made acceptable by casting an extremely attractive actor and emphasising the possibility of a homosexual relationship between Bertram and the "clothes horse" fop, Parolles...'
While there is a citation attached, this reads as the author's opinion, and a rather tendentious one to boot, as it implies that the only way the story can be made acceptable is by implying a 'homosexual relationship between Bertram...and Parolles.' Perhaps this is a paraphrase of a critic's opinion, and perhaps this was in fact used in a successful performance; however, it certainly does not represent a universally espoused stance on the play. As such, the statement needs to be edited or removed. 
This type of editorial writing appears throughout the 'Analysis' section. RobotBoy66 (talk) 07:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: "This type of editorial writing appears throughout the 'Analysis' section." And for good reason. Wikipedia's entire concept is to summarize the opinions of its sources. If something is "universally" espoused or known, it probably is not worth any mention in the article. Dimadick (talk) 12:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Analysis & Criticism