The Myth of the Sad Ending

            Pretty much everyone in an English-speaking country with some formal education has probably heard of William Shakespeare or read one of his plays. After years of archeology, preservation, and transcripts, one can be fairly sure of the accuracy of most texts today. Interestingly enough, the people living in England around the late seventeenth century did not have this assurance.
(word of warning, for those who haven't read King Lear yet, there will be spoilers).

It seems that around 1687, a poet named Nahum Tate read Shakespeare's King Lear and didn't like the way it ended. Therefore, he wrote an entirely new ending, stuck it on to the end of the original play, and tried to set that up as the original play. Apparently, audiences believed it, and it took some years before someone found a copy of the original play and exposed Tate as the author of the revised version.



Some time last spring, in one of my English Literature classes, we read Tate's version of King Lear. The basic difference is that just after Edmund dies, Edgar and Lear kill the guards, save Cordelia, and Edgar ends up marrying her and becoming Lear's heir. My personal favorite passage was Edgar's ending speech:

"Our drooping Country now erects her Head,
Peace spreads her balmy Wings, and Plenty blooms.
Divine Cordelia, all the Gods can witness
How much thy Love to Empire I prefer!
Thy bright Example shall convince the World
(Whatever Storms of Fortune are decreed)
That Truth and Virtue shall at last succeed."

On discussion day, one classmate I never got along with raised his hand to give his opinion. He said plainly that he didn't like it. His reasoning? It's unrealistic how the ending is happy with "rainbows, ponies, and everything wrapped up in a nice pretty bow." The reason for that stuck with me; because life--according to him--doesn't always end up so happily.

To clarify, I also don't like Nahum Tate's ending, but for an entirely different reason. However, my classmate's opinion is common in the world of fiction today. In the minds of a majority of today's audiences, stories that end on a happy note are seen as either immature or unrealistic because--as noted by my classmate--because "life doesn't always end happily."

This I don't agree with.

True, life doesn't always end happily (although it can be argued that since Christians are born again, life does always end happily for them), but sad endings like the original King Lear aren't indicative of a good ending just because of life sometimes ends happily. For example . . . (warning, more spoilers)

A lot of the comments on youtube seem to indicate that folks prefer the 2010 version of the movie True Grit to the 1969 version (I'd link to the page I'm referring to, but the comments section of youtube tends to either be profane or devoid of rational thought). Apart from the biggest difference of Jeff Bridges starring as Rooster Cogburn in place of John Wayne, the end of the film was distinctly "grittier." Bridges hauls Hailee Steinfield (debuting as Maddie Ross) across the Arkansas plains after she was bitten by a snake to get her to a doctor. He is too late to save her arm, however, so the doctor is forced to cut it off. Then there's a huge time leap when Maddie is a grown up. This is all narrated to the audience by adult Maddie on her way to visit Cogburn. As it turns out, he died just before she got there. She buries him and walks off-screen, wondering whatever happened to the character played by Matt Damon. Then the credits start rolling.

This movie has the quintessential sad ending: Maddie loses her arm, the man who helped her avenge her father's death, and she mentions that she's an old maid, so she's definitely lonely. Was it a good ending? I didn't think it was. The action in this movie appears to be around Maddie's quest for revenge, but I'd say it's more centered around Maddie's relationship with Marshal Cogburn since the actual revenge sections added up only take up about ten minutes  of the movie. If this is true, then nothing is really resolved from a huge time leap between one event and another before narrating the ending. I finished the movie wondering why I even watched the movie if there really was no point to it. After all, nothing came of their relationship, since adult Maddie wasn't really affected by his death nor especially changed by the events of the movie. So while True Grit certainly ends sadder than the film with John Wayne, I wouldn't say it's a better story.

I guess it can be argued that there isn't always resolution in life, but most fiction writers agree that it should always exist in fiction. Even if the main character's life is not resolved, whatever drives the conflict or action of the story must be resolved, which I don't feel was the case with True Grit.

So if not a grittier, sadder ending, what does make a realistic ending?

Ultimately, the ending of a story must resolve the conflict of the story, but it must be developmental rather than sudden.  That's why I don't think Nahum Tate's ending wasn't a good revision. Nothing in the play suggested any hope for such an ending and it seemed like it was just dropped in so that it would be happy.

Therefore, a happy ending is not necessarily indicative of a poor ending, but it is if the only reason it exists is so the audience will be happy.