CS: It’s an awfully corny question, but was Quartermaine someone in your imagination or was he based on someone you’d met?
SG: Well, I taught in language schools a lot in Cambridge and it was the spirit of the place, I thought. On the one hand there were the garrulous, rather hopeless, ambitious pushers. I never knew quite what they were pushing for, just more classes or whatever and there was always this sense of a lonely spirit somewhere. He came last in the writing of the play; all the other characters came first.
CS: So he wasn’t even pushing for attention in the creative [process]? SG: No, I don’t know how he happened. I’m very grateful to him for happening but he wasn’t there at the beginning. But as soon as he arrived everything else made sense.
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