Shakespeare's Endings: A Study of the Final Lines in Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest

The Use of Rhyme in Shakespeare's Endings

Focus on the final lines of the three Shakespeare plays we (will) have read: Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. In Simon Palfrey’s book, Doing Shakespeare, he notes how “Shakespeare pretty much always ends his plays with a rhyme” because “rhyme is expected to negotiate the play’s passage into closure,” but Palfrey quickly notes a few exceptions to this general rule: Hamlet, where “a rhyming couplet is followed by a single flat departing line,” The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. Of course, one might wish to challenge Palfrey’s claim that The Tempest does not end on a rhyme because, well, it does, so long as we include Prospero’s “Epilogue,” which immediately follows Act 5. This challenge to Palfrey, however, only raises another question: why did Shakespeare feel it necessary to append an epilogue to The Tempest but not the other two plays we’ve read and discussed this semester? The question to answer here is “what’s up with Shakespeare’s endings”? Fortinbras, who speaks only half a dozen lines in the play prior to the final scene of Hamlet, delivers the last lines, presumably because he will be the next king of Denmark. But what is the effect of having this “outsider” deliver the play’s final speech? And what, if anything, does Fortinbras know about the people and events that preceded his entrance onstage? How would you characterize Fortinbras’ speech? Is it public? Political? If so, what public and/or political work does it do? In King Lear the character chosen to deliver the last lines, and thus presumably the next King of Britain, depends on whether you consult the 1608 Quarto or the 1623 First Folio: in the Quarto, Albany speaks the plays final four lines (a pair of rhyming couplets); in the Folio, those same lines are reassigned to Edgar. What difference does it make? What do the lines even mean? Do they sound more like something Albany (who has been a bit wishy-washy and has had trouble making up his mind about which side of the war he was fighting on) or Edgar (who has spent the entire play in a series of disguises including but not limited to Poor Tom, the bedlam beggar, and the “fair and warlike” knight (5.3.140) who fights Edmund in the play’s final scene) would say? Who speaks the final lines of The Tempest? Are there loose ends and unanswered questions at the end of this comedy? What, for example, will become of Caliban? Is his future and fate left for readers and audiences to decide? Write a minimum of 1 page. If you choose to write 7 pages on the significance of Shakespeare’s last lines, then congratulations! You’re done with the exam!