SEMANTIC REVIVAL OF A CLICHÉ IN SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS: ‘ALL IS WELL’
SEMANTIC REVIVAL OF A CLICHÉ IN SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS: ‘ALL IS WELL’

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the textual function of the generic sentence ‘ALL–BE– WELL’, with its various actualisations, in a corpus consisting of 17 Shakespearean plays, ranged over all four periods of creation and illustrative of each traditionally defined species. Suggestions from speech act theory are selectively applied in order to identify and describe the key role played by this utterance in determining the sequence of events that the characters experience and strive to influence. The ‘ALL–BE–WELL’ speech act is demonstrated to be a magic command, initially infelicitous. Three lines of evolution from a basically tragic initial situation then provide relevant elements for a typological differentiation of the texts. The focus of the article lies on the ways in which ‘ALL–BE– WELL’ syntagms undergo a semantic reactivation when they are interpreted at the level of the sense-constitutive units.

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