In the final lines of the play, Horatio suggests that he explain what happened to result in 4 deaths at one party in the form of a play. This proposition and then the following preparations made me wonder at what the rest of the play was: was it Horatio's play or was it a more "truthful" play because Horatio hadn't been in every scene, but just heard about the scenes he wasn't in from other people. This second play recounting the same story as the play I was about to finish reading reminded me of many of the conversations we had in class about what is "real" and what is not while we were reading The Things They Carried. I think that Horatio's proposed play within a play, along with other ironic allusions to acting and stages throughout the play, and with the inclusion and focus on madness (something which can be caused by a difficulty at determining what is real and what is not) that Shakespeare was trying to challenge the idea that people immerse themselves in entertainment/literature and make it "real" when in it isn't truly "real", only a story being told by a group of people who take on the personas of fictitious (even if they were potentially based upon actual people) characters in order to tell it.
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