PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS

One of Shakespeare’s techniques is the dramatic convention of a play-within-a-play, popular in Elizabethan times and used in several of his works including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and, most importantly, Hamlet. It is important to note that he wasn’t the first to use such technique. Read here.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream  the most obvious example is the laborers' performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, and their inept production serves three important functions in the larger structure of the larger play. Read here.