Song within a Play
Remember how we told you "Winter" is actually a song in the play Love's Labour's Lost? Well, Love's Labour's Lost isn't the only play that has a song in it. It turns out there are tons of songs embedded in many of Shakespeare's plays, and not just in the fun ones (like A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It). There are songs in Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and countless others.
To get an idea of just how varied the use of songs is in Shakespeare's plays, check this out. If you take a quick peek at all the songs excerpted there, you will quickly realize that Shakespeare's songs perform a variety of roles, from entertainment to sophisticated references to tips-of-the-hat.