The ending confused me so much
I had no clue what was going on at some point. Great movie though.
shareWhich part of the ending, Jimmy? The play? The reckoning - fifty pounds? The shipwreck? The credits?
shareEverything after the play ended.
shareReally? Well, here goes.
Just as the play ends, while the cast are still taking their bows, Master Tilney, the Master of the Revels, turns up with some guards to close the Curtain playhouse and arrest the actors and management for the crime of allowing a woman - Viola - to act on the public stage. You'll remember that earlier in the story he does this, successfully, to the Rose playhouse.
As he is announcing his intention the Queen reveals herself, having been watching the play from the lower gallery in secret. (The Queen would never really have attended a performance at a public playhouse, but this is comedy, not history).
The Queen of course knows that 'Master Kent' is indeed a woman, Viola de Lessops, but as she chooses to support the fiction that this is a boy player, nobody can contradict her, so Tilney has to bow and acquiesce.
Lord Wessex, who has also been watching from the gallery, runs round to meet the Queen outside the playhouse. He wants his newly wed wife back. The Queen remembers the bet made at the court in Greenwich - can the theatre show the true nature of love? - and declares that Wessex has lost the bet. He is obliged to give her the fifty pounds he got from Viola's father for 'expenses at the dock'. The Queen gives the money to Viola to 'see safely home' to Will, who by writing the play Romeo and Juliet has won the bet. She sends Viola to give the money to Will and say her farewells, and also to commission him to write a comedy for the court for Twelfth Night (6th January, the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas and a traditional time for topsy-turvy merriment).
With this fifty pounds he can buy a share in the theatre company, so he is no longer a 'hired man'. It's a big advance to his career - as is the royal commission, of course.
We see the lovers part. Will, left alone, begins to write, to this commission, the play we know as Twelfth Night, which contains many elements inspired by recent events - disguises, false identities, deceptions, shipwrecks... "and the heroine's name shall be Viola".
In the closing moments of the film we see Viola as the victim of an actual shipwreck, and she is "cast ashore in an unknown land" - which I suppose we can assume is Virginia, since that was where she was going with her new husband Lord Wessex
Does that help at all?
Yeah, Thanks.
That's more or less what I thought happened, but I wasn't sure. Maybe I was confused because it moved too fast toward the end compared to the pacing of the rest of the film.
Excellent summary and explanation of the ending, but I have one disagreement. Will is writing Twelfth Night and we see Viola in a shipwreck and then walking on an endless beach. My view has always been that that is a scene in Will's imagination and the endless beach symbolizes Viola, his muse, walking into eternity (eternal fame, I mean, not death) through his play (a constant theme in Shakespeare, even in the Sonnet he writes for Viola in the film, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day).
shareTom Stoppard said he wanted a riff on the opening of the New World (America - a little ahead of time in the 1590's) and at one point wanted the skyline of Manhattan to fade in on the horizon. However, John Madden was so pleased with everyone's effort on the film he petitioned for a black background behind the credits so everyone's name could be clearly read and the producers agreed with him.
sharealfa-16: is that supposed to be funny?
shareI always thought it symbolized a final irony in that she's finally got the freedom she always wanted and is walking off to a great and unknown adventure in the New World.
But I'm sure it's intended to be open to a lot of interpretation, not least whether it's real at all or "just" Will's fantasy opening to his play.
Innsmouth Free Press http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com
I'll take the ending as it played in the movie without a "lot of interpretation". . . . ..the shipwreck, and Viola as a survivor finding herself in the New World and walking on the beach to an unknown future.
share“Excellent summary and explanation of the ending, but I have one disagreement. Will is writing Twelfth Night and we see Viola in a shipwreck and then walking on an endless beach. My view has always been that that is a scene in Will's imagination and the endless beach symbolizes Viola, his muse, walking into eternity (eternal fame, I mean, not death) through his play (a constant theme in Shakespeare, even in the Sonnet he writes for Viola in the film, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day).”
Yes, imagination only. Viola is much better off married to Wessex and destined to become a rich (tobacco!), aristocratic, loving mother who occasionally takes a highly regarded lover. Her chances were not good alone on the shores of the New World. Alternative views welcome.