Tom Stoppard
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
What home?
Haven't you got one?
Why do you ask?
What are you driving at?
What's your name?
Repetition.
Two love.
Match point.
Who do you think you are?
Rhetoric.
Game and match.
What's happening is that there are these two people who are stuck there waiting for the next event to discuss and talk about.
Between Shakespeare's scenes, they don't really have any purpose or role, and they pass the time in different ways.
They discuss things, they speculate, and occasionally they get into some kind of game.
Words is all they have available.
They don't
They don't have TV or whatever.
They're just there with themselves.
So in some strange way, the predicament of the writer is the same as the predicament of the characters, because in writing the play, I was in exactly that situation, that they had a scene between scenes.
There was no plot that they were aware of, so they had to pass the time, and I had to invent ways to help them to pass the time.