Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet asks Polonius to treat the theatrical players well, as they will tell stories of him, depending on how he treats them. If he is not hospitable and generous to them, they will give him a bad name after he dies.