Happy ending

A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which most everything turns out for the best for the hero or heroine, their sidekicks, and just about everyone but the villains. The prince gets the princess and, in the traditional phrase from fairy tales, they all live "happily ever after."

Related Topics:
Plot - Fiction - Hero - Sidekick - Villain - Prince - Princess - Fairy tale

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The presence of a happy ending is one of the key points that distinguishes melodrama from tragedy. In certain periods, the endings of traditional tragedies such as Macbeth or Oedipus Rex, in which most of the major characters end up dead, disfigured, or discountenanced, have been actively disliked. In the eighteenth century, the Irish author Nahum Tate sought to improve Shakespeare's King Lear by rewriting the ending so that Lear survives, Cordelia and Edgar marry, and the three sisters are reconciled. Most subsequent critics have not found Tate's amendments an improvement. Happy endings have also been fastened to Romeo and Juliet and Othello.

Related Topics:
Melodrama - Tragedy - Macbeth - Oedipus Rex - Eighteenth century - Nahum Tate - Shakespeare - King Lear - Romeo and Juliet - Othello

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In the modern world, happy endings have sometimes been viewed as an American specialty, and the English-language words happy ending (or happy end) have been imported as-is into other languages to make this point. In the 1928 Austrian operetta, Die Herzogin von Chicago, the two lovers who are too proud to speak to one another are finally brought together by a Hollywood producer who explains that he plans to make a movie of their love story, but that he cannot, until it has the required happy ending.

Related Topics:
American - English-language - 1928 - Austrian - Operetta - Die Herzogin von Chicago - Hollywood

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Some works of fiction, such as Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's operetta The Threepenny Opera or F. W. Murnau's film The Last Laugh, have intentionally implausible happy endings.

Related Topics:
Kurt Weill - Bertolt Brecht - Operetta - The Threepenny Opera - F. W. Murnau - The Last Laugh

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A happy ending is also a slang term used in massage meaning masturbation is performed on the patient by the therapist at the end of a massage session. Typically a happy ending can be received in any number of adult massage parlors, but is not a mainstream technique.

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The Happy Ending is a 1969 motion picture.

Related Topics:
The Happy Ending - 1969 - Motion picture

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