SOURCE: “The Sense of an Ending in Shakespeare's Early Comedies,” in Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, Vol. 7, 1986, pp. 109-21.

In this essay, Curren Aquino discusses the concluding scenes of The Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labor's Lost. She judges that in each instance, the final scene effectively crystallizes the themes, imagery, characterization, and dramatic action of the play as a whole.

About Shakespeare's endings, Samuel Johnson wrote:

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 labor 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.

(71-72)

In the twentieth century, Ernest Schanzer has echoed Dr. Johnson's opinion in his commentary on A Midsummer Night's Dream...