When I was young I was taught a term describing a play within a play. Although "intermission" has been used (as brief plays were used to entertain during scene changes) that is not the term I was taught so many years ago. Can anyone suggest a different word?
Innerplay?
[(a pun based on interplay)]
The term I learned was one adapted from heraldic terminology:
mise-en-abyme.
Try not to fall off, then.
Try not to fall off, then.
You talkin' t'me?
Miss on a beam! Jackie!!!! I saw that!
Oh no! It's catching!
Try not to fall off, then.
You talkin' t'me?
Yes--you said you were on a beam. [EG]
(Ted, we were close!)
Yes--you said you were on a beam.
Oh, "Me's on a beam" is good-enough English for you and me?
Hey, I had to make do with what I had!
Here is a nice example of the use of mise-en-abyme in film—Citizen Kane, no less.
That is a "visual" and I have always referred to that as "infinite regression".
I have two mirrors in my bathroom that can give met that effect.
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The term I learned was one adapted from heraldic terminology: mise-en-abyme.
Wouldn't 'interval play' cover that same meaning? (seems like there is some falling involved in this too) 
Subtextual, subconscious input, maybe.
More likely, an antimoralistic intrusion into the fog of art.
Yes, that's it...an antimoralistic intrusion into the fog of art.
Wouldn't 'interval play' cover that same meaning?
I don't think so. An entr'acte is a separate piece performed during half-time as it were). A play-within-a-play is more of a mise-en-abyme.
I would take the play-within-a-play to be something like the play in Hamlet where Hamlet gets the traveling theater group to re-enact Claudius's murder of his father, not something totally disconnected like a separate play that just happens to be staged between acts. Mise-en-abyme might well be a term for this, but so is play-within-a-play. The advantage of the latter term is that people might understand what you're saying when you use it.
The advantage of the latter term is that people might understand what you're saying when you use it.
But, now, if one runs across the other term, and it is used extensively in certain contexts, then one will understand what's being written or talked about.
I grew up knowing this term as either a "conceit", or a "Frame Story."
...well it was a bit of stretch, since Gonzaga only lost by eight points, which isn't really getting "
murdered."
This is a bit off topic, but what do you think Hamlet's famous soliloquy is really about: Is it about suicide, as is popularly assumed, or is he asking a more oblique question about whether in life it is better to a) roll with the punches ("suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune") or b) throw one's self into the affray ("take arms against a sea of troubles")? Most scholars who write prefaces for editions of Hamlet are markedly in favour of the second idea, especially in view of the story itself—but I feel that that overlooks the obvious.
what do you think Hamlet's famous soliloquy is really about
I always felt it was about a perennial graduate (or should that be gradual?) student resigning himself to being ABD, but I may be reading more into it than out of it.
nuncle,
what language is the above?
what does it mean?
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ABD?
All But Dissertation.
Ah.
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ABD abbreviation all but dissertation, used to denote a student who has completed all other parts of a doctorate : ABDs will be considered, but receipt of the doctorate will be a condition of tenure.
what language is the above?tlhIngan Hol / Klingon
what does it mean? "to be or not (to be)"
It's from the
KLI version of
Hamlet in the original Klingon.
[applause]
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what language is the above?
tlhIngan Hol / Klingon
what does it mean?
"to be or not (to be)"
It's from the KLI version of Hamlet in the original Klingon.
Nerd alert.
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what do you think Hamlet's famous soliloquy is really about
Hamlet died from an overdose of Wedlock according to The History Of The World by Richard Lederer