curtain line

American  

noun

Theater.

1. the last line of a scene, act, etc., as in a play; tag line.

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Etymology

Origin of curtain line

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

curtain line

Audiences, actors, directors, everyone pressed Shaw to give the play a happy ending — the actress he had written Eliza for rebelled and wrote her own cutesy curtain line — but Shaw wouldn’t budge.

From New York Times ● Mar. 27, 2018

What Ben doesn’t know, he tells us in the curtain line, “would fill a book”: he is a blank slate whose life in some way is only now beginning.

From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2011

This time, the curtain line was his: “Nobody’s perfect.”

From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2010

Max Beerbohm once concocted a curtain line for which there was no play: "I'm leaving for the Thirty Years' War!"

From Time Magazine Archive

The Prologue, Scenes II, IV, V, the first part of Scene VII and the Epilogue were all played before a plain velvet drop hung a few feet upstage of the curtain line.

From Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays by Various