The problems and pitfalls of an enterprise are justified and forgotten, so long as everything turns out well in the end.

Given that Shakespeare wrote ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ over 400 years ago it might be assumed that he coined the expression. In fact it was a proverb long before it was a play title. The Middle English Dialogue between Reason & Adversity, circa 1425 describes the saying as ‘this olde prouerbe’.

The earliest version known in print is in the 13th century English prose poem The Proverbs of Hendyng:

Wel is him þat wel ende mai.
[Well is him that may end well.]

John Heywood was probably the first to put the provebr into the form we now use – albeit in Middle English. He included it in A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546:

Lovers live by love, ye as larkes live by leekes
Saied this Ales, muche more then halfe in mockage.
Tushe (quoth mine aunte) these lovers in dotage
Thinke the ground beare them not, but wed of corage
They must in all haste, though a leafe of borage
Might by all the substance that they can fell.
Well aunt (quoth Ales) all is well that endes well.