(no subject)

[rm]

Okay, all you avid readers, I need help.

I need actual books that reference books or plays that don't actually exist in our world (but we perhaps wish they did) a la "The Swordsman Whose Name was not Death" from The Privilege of the Sword.

Yes, I'm up to something, although I'm not sure of the shape or viability of it yet.

Comments

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy has Hieronimo's "play within the play" that he's written, with each of the four parts ostensibly spoken in a different language in performance (he and Bel-Imperia use it as the pretense for murdering Horatio's killers and then themselves). Hieronimo also writes another play earlier in Kyd's play that's a "dumb show."

Hamlet, of course, has The Murder of Gonzago/The Mousetrap, and Bill's use derives from Kyd's use of the meta-theater.

There's also Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 with the fake Jacobean revenge tragedy, The Courier's Tragedy.

Finally, I can think of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing which has a playwright writing a play-within-the-play.