When Shakespeare placed a play within a play in Hamlet, his titular character realized "The play's the thing." For the centuries that followed, plays and theater have played a pivotal role in fiction, adding an extra layer of narrative to the story.

In the spirit of those stories within stories, here is a short list of recommended fiction in which a play has its own role within the plot. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

A traveling Shakespearean troupe features prominently in this stunning post-apocalyptic novel.

Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson

The first in Jónasson's Dark Iceland thriller series. A small, isolated town where nothing ever happens serves as the backdrop to an Agatha Christie-esque "locked room"-type mystery with the mysterious death of a highly esteemed writer in a local theater.

The Backstagers

This YA graphic novel series has a new spinoff novel, The Backstagers and the Ghost Light. It's perfect for fans of Noelle Stevenson, with a touch of otherworldly portals in the wings of the theater.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Lotto and Matilde star in their own perspectives of plays, greatness and their marriage.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The protagonist of this elegiac, evocative novel—Briony, a 13-year-old girl living in England on the brink of World War II—is both the narrator of the book's events, and the director and star of a play she puts on during the course of the story. Briony's complex inner life is unreliable but irresistable, even as readers know she isn't quite trustworthy. Briony narrates the epilogue, too, a sort of meta-commentary on the novel you've just finished. (Thanks to Gwen Glazer for the annotation!)

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

Chapter 51 "in which a Charade is acted which may or may not Puzzle the Reader"