Tom Stoppard

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.

So all three of us, Rosencrantz and Grudenstern and I, we were in the same situation.

Yes, I don't know why, but there's something about that which clearly appeals to me, because I've used it more than once, more than twice.

There's something about writing about the relationship between one work of art, inside or up against,

another known play by somebody else.

There's something which makes sparks for me and it got to a point a few years ago where I had to stop myself from doing another one of those.

It was becoming a kind of mannerism.

But anyway, in my case, I'm always writing about the ostensible subject matter, not the supposed subtext.