All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare, originally classified as a comedy, though now often counted as one of his problem plays, so-called because they cannot be easily classified as tragedy or comedy. It was probably written in later middle part of Shakespeare's career, between 1601 and 1608, and was first published in the First Folio in 1623. The name of the play comes from the proverb All's well that ends well, which means that problems do not matter so long as the outcome is good.