ABSTRACT
When I asked a group of playwrights what the single most dif ficult task in writing a play was, unanimously they answered, “Endings!” So, I decided to investigate the qualities that combined to formulate a successful ending. I started with the Oxford English Dictionary. The definition of an ending is: an action that con cludes, completes, or terminates. It is also described as a boundary, an outcome, a result, a final purpose, the object for which the thing exists, the direction in which one wants to play toward, as in the end zone, and, as a destination.1
