Tom Stoppard, playwright who dazzled with verbal gymnastics, dies aged 88

By Barbara Lewis

LONDON, Nov 29 (Reuters) – “What’s it about?” was a frequent response from bemused theatre-goers to “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, Tom Stoppard’s first stage triumph.

Tired of being asked, Stoppard is said to have replied to a woman outside a theatre on Broadway: “It’s about to make me very rich.”

He later questioned whether he had said “very”, Hermione Lee writes in Stoppard’s authorised biography, but he had undoubtedly managed to transform his previously precarious finances.

For every puzzled spectator, there were many more ecstatic fans and critics, dazzled by the wit, brilliant wordplay and sheer daring of a young playwright who had turned Shakespeare inside out and placed the spotlight, not on the eponymous Hamlet, but on two minor characters from the s