 The play is based on a tale (tale nine of day three) of Boccaccio's "The Decameron".Shakespeare may have read an English translation of the tale in William Painter's "Palace of Pleasure".There is no evidence that "All's Well That Ends Well" was popular in Shakespeare's own lifetime and it has remained one of his lesser-known plays ever since, in part due to its unorthodox mixture of fairy tale logic, gender role reversals and cynical realism.