the repeated internal assurances that all's well that ends well condition the audience to expect a satisfactory romance resolution, and permit the playwright to describe fairy-tale events, corrupt and even detestable characters, figures (like the Widow) who seem to emerge from the quite different genre of city comedy, and frank scenarios of sexual seduction, and to keep all of these comfortably under control until the disclosures of the last scene. They lighten the “problems” of this “problem play”
