Five Ways to End a Play: Tips from Shakespeare and Others

by Conrad Geller

Your play is going well. It has a title that will both rivet and intrigue its audience ("Sexual Surprise," "The Truth About Barney," "Tales of the Oval Office"). You are satisfied with the opening (The hero breaks into the ballroom, swinging on a chandelier, and announces, "This wedding must not proceed!"). The characters, you are convinced, relate meaningfully and develop convincingly. The dialogue crackles. The theme is timely.

So what's the problem? Well, here you are, approaching the inevitable denouement, and you don't know how to end the darn thing. The actors can't just suddenly bow and walk off the stage, as at a concert. And you can't go on forever, as in a soap opera.

Endings get less attention from writers than beginnings, but they are just as important, perhaps even more difficult to do well. Their function is of course to complete the action, explain the mystery, or bring a relationship to fruition. More important, you want to give the audience something to take with them, emotionally and intellectually, when the leave the theater. You need some kind of boffo finish.

As usual in all the arts, formulas never work: the best ending in any play is one that rises organically out of the characters and their actions.. There are, however, some strategies that have persisted from back in Shakespeare's time, by which authors have come to successful conclusions.

1. In the purest, classic sort of Epilogue, evolving out of the choral commentaries in Greek drama, either a spokesperson for the author or one of the characters steps forward to make a final comment and sometimes to ask for applause.

The Tempest ends with a kind of swan song from Prospero, maybe because Shakespeare himself was considering retirement at this time:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands: . . .

In our time, the enormously popular No Time for Sergeants concludes with an almost classic epilogue:

Everythin' come out as good as Tony and the Pony, didn't it? Well, that's
how I got my ribbon and Ben got his medal. . . . I want to thank yall for
bein' such good listeners and not leavin' the hall no more'n you had to . . .
Mickey Mouse got his hands way up to goin' home time! Good night!

A surprising number of other important modern plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, We Bombed in New Haven, and The Glass Menagerie make use of the seemingly anachronistic device of epilogue.

Epilogue can be tricky, but if you need to tear away the play's illusions, or to appear in your own person for any reason, or to nail down the meaning or theme, it might be time to try it.

2. The Song ending, often requiring the entire cast to burst into vigorous lyric, is a distinguishing characteristic of the American Musical Comedy genre (think Oklahoma!), but Shakespeare, too, used song as an ending on several occasions (Love's Labour Lost is one). Except for musicals, however, you might find it hard to achieve smoothness or believability with a musical ending; though it's worth considering as a way of reprising any incidental music that was used to set mood or define character. Wendy Wasserstein does it powerfully at the end of The Heidi Chronicles when the main character picks up her guitar and sings a song familiar to the audience:

Darling, you send me
You send me
Honest you do, honest you do.

3. In a way, the Triumph or Catastrophe ending puts plot at the center of the drama, which is right where Aristotle put it, too. Katherine's final speech in The Taming of the Shrew, in which she makes an amazing flip from defiant shrew to submissive wife, is certainly the climax of that play.

Rising action all the way to the end might be best if a character must finally reveal him or herself in a violent outburst, as in many murder mysteries, or when the falling action is obvious or unimportant. The best modern use of the climactic ending is probably in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Elizabeth Proctor, having failed to get her husband to save his life by compromising his integrity, experiences a peculiar mixture of both triumph and catastrophe:

He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him.

This, fellow playwrights, is the way to do it.

4. The Life Goes On ending grew naturally out of the"slice of life" drama so prevalent since the Twenties. This kind of ending, which suggests, "That's the way it is, and that's the way it's going to be," Suppose, for example, that your play is mainly about a way of life: small-town residents, young urban executives, whatever. The plot and the resolution of personal conflicts are less important than the ambiance of the play itself. In that case, Life Goes On might just work best for you.

In The Odd Couple, for example, after the minor stresses of the plot, we see that Felix hasn't changed and isn't going to change:

Then let's play poker. And watch your cigarettes, will you? This is my house, not a pig sty.

Perhaps the best model for the Life Goes On ending is in Thornton Wilder's monumental Our Town. The Stage Manager's comments throughout have formed a backdrop and antiphony for the action, and he plays the final coda:

Most everybody's asleep in Grover's Corners. There are a few lights on: Shorty Hawkins, down at the depot, has just watched the Albany train go by--(to the audience) Hm . . .Eleven o'clock in Grover's Corners--You get a good rest, too. Good night.

Another work by Thornton Wilder--and my favorite, The Skin of Our Teeth--presents a twist on the Life Goes On technique: circularity. The Skin of Our Teeth begins and ends with the same speech, by the same character; the idea seems to be, "Not only does life go on, it goes round and round." Obviously you should consider this extreme only if circularity is the main idea. It's dangerous, because it seems a bit gimmicky.

5. Setting It All to Rights was Shakespeare's favorite ending, especially in the tragedies and histories. Typically, an authority figure, often the last royal survivor of the preceding carnage, comes to the middle of the stage to reward the faithful and punish the guilty. In Macbeth it is Malcolm, inheritor of the Scottish crown, who plays this role; And in Hamlet, it is Fortinbras, practically the only one left alive, who has to Set Everything Right in the end.

So, budding Bards, now you know how to end your blockbuster. All that remains is for me to conclude. Let's see, which one of these ending might be best?

1. Dear Reader:
   If the preceding paragraphs have found
   Some favor in your eyes, my task is done.
   But if you wish, it would not be amiss
   To send a small donation to the author.

2. (cast--all sing)
   Conclusion!
   Conclusion!
   It's best without confusion!
   (repeat)

3. And so, as I swallow the first of the cyanide pills, I know that my life has been an inspiration for all writers for ages to come.

4. Well, now the article is finished. Tomorrow there will be another article, and then another one after that, and . . .

5. Your script has been accepted for an upcoming HBO Special. Mom and Dad, for their devoted work in nourishing such genius, are awarded a generous pension. As for the villainous editors who unthinkingly rejected your work, be assured that suitable punishment will be devised.

-- CG
©1999 Conrad Geller