Definition of play within a play?

Answer 1

A play within a play is a term used to describe a situation in a play where, usually, the actors are either watching a play or putting on a play. One example of this is the 1982 play Noises Off by English playwright Michael Frayn. In Noises Off, the actors are performing a play called Nothing On, a comedy that goes wrong in every possible way offstage,.

Answer 2

A play within a play is when the characters whom the actors are portraying on stage, are themselves actors and perform a play within the context of the main story. A famous example is found in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Answer 3

It's called mise-en-abîme. It translates as "placing into the abyss" but is the French term that comes from an old technique used in heraldry where a shield design was placed onto a shield. The suggestion was that it could go on forever.

Addition: an English term for this phenomenon would be 'The Pirandello Effect'.

Answer 4

In Midsummer's Night Dream, Shakespeare had a troop of actors practicing a play that Puck took one of Actors (Bottom) to turn into a man with a donkey's head and make Titania, Queen of the Fairies, fall in love with.

Answer 5

A number of Elizabethan plays feature a play within a play: Shakespeare's Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. The play within the play serves a different purpose in each play. In Hamlet it is the means of uncovering a murderer. In The Spanish Tragedy it is the means of committing a murder. In A Midsummer Night's Dream the play is some broad comedy to round off the play.

Answer 6

From the perspective of the players, it is just another performance on the road trip they are obliged to take because business is bad in the capital. From Hamlet's point of view, it is a way to test whether the ghost was speaking the truth about his father's death. In terms of the audience, it enables the audience to realize that Claudius really did kill King Hamlet by giving him a reason to confess.