1
Is this the promised end? (King Lear,
5.3.238) The Stagecraft of Shakespeares
Endings
2
Prologue Hamlets Jig

• Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
• The hart ungalled play,
• For some must watch, while some must sleep,
• So runs the world away.
• (3.2.234-237)

3

• Would not this his performance of the song,
  sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my
  fortunes turn Turk with me, with two Provencal
  roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a
  cry of players, sir?

4
(No Transcript)
5
The Eschatology of Endings(eschatology
    a. The department of theological science
concerned with the four last things death,
judgement, heaven, and hell.)

• I would give you some violets, but they withered
  all when my father died. They say a made a good
  end.
• Ophelia, 4.5.182

6
The Eschatology of Endings

• The world is a stage, life is the play we come
  on, look about us, and go off again.
• Democritus (4thC BC)
• God is the Author of all our Tragedies, a
  playwright who hath written out and appointed
  what every Man must play. Death is the end of
  the Play, and takes from all.
• Sir Walter Ralegh, History of the World (pub.1614)

7
A Theory of Endings?

• Our composition must be more accurate in the
  beginning and end, than in the midst and in the
  end more, than in the beginning for through the
  midst the stream bears us.
• Ben Jonson, Discoveries (pub.1641)
• Accurate    1. Executed with care careful.

8
Shakespeares Careless Endings?

• In many of his plays the latter part is evidently
  neglected. When he found himself near the end of
  his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened
  the labour to snatch the profit. He therefore
  remits his efforts where he should most
  vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is
  improbably produced or imperfectly represented.
• Samuel Johnson, 1765

9
Theatre as durational art form

• Like as the waves make towards the pebbled
  shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end
• Each changing place with that which goes
  before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  
• Sonnet 60

10
The Craft of Endings some questions and
tentative answers

• 1) How long does an ending last? Final scene
  average 240 lines or c.16 minutes
• 2) What is the average length of the closing
  speech act? 9.25 lines
• 3) Who speaks it? A male character
• 4) What time elapses between the death of a major
  character and the end of the play? Average 64
  lines

11
The Craft of Endings some questions and
tentative answers

• 5) How many plays end in rhyming couplets?
  Approx. 75 or three in four
• 6) How many plays end with the promise of
  offstage discussion? At least 14
• 7) How many plays end with an epilogue or a jig?
  Impossible to say, but 10 epilogues survive in
  print
• 8) When does a performance end? Discuss

12
The Ending of the Shrew
13
The new puritanism

• For a variety of reasons theatrical professionals
  continue to be unsatisfied with the closing
  moments of Shakespeares plays as scripted in the
  Folio and the Quartos, so that a playgoer is
  especially likely to encounter some form of
  rescripting in Act 5.
• (Alan Dessen, Rescripting Shakespeare, p.109)

14
The theatres defence against puritanism

• A production is only correct at the moment of its
  correctness, and only good at the moment of its
  success. In its beginning is its beginning, and
  in its end its end.
• Peter Brook

15
UNEXPECTED ENDINGS
16
Conclusions

• Endings in the early modern theatre had a
  theological dimension
• Far from being careless, Shakespeare deliberately
  experimented with different forms of dramatic
  (non)closure throughout his career, sometimes
  providing more than one ending for the same play
  (e.g. Lear)
• Shakespeare often embeds an interpretive
  injunction at the end of his plays

17

• The playtext is a radically incomplete form of
  writing and the performance does not end with
  language
• This incompletion demands that theatrical
  practitioners exceed the text and shape their own
  endings
• Its hard to say exactly when the performance
  ends
• All statistics should be treated with caution
  and require interpretation

18
Henry Irvings end to Hamlet

• Good night, sweet Prince,
• And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest
• Whiles I behind remain to tell the tale
• Which shall hereafter make the hearers pale.

19
King Lear Quarto (1608)

• Lear. And my poore foole is hangd, no, no life,
  why should a dog, a horse, a rat of life, and
  thou no breath at all, O thou wilt come no more,
  neuer, neuer, neuer, pray you vndo this button,
  thanke you sir, O, o, o o.
• Edg. He faints my Lord, my Lord.
• Lear. Breake hart, I prethe breake.

20
King Lear Folio (1623)