The trap: Inspector Hound's illusion game

Abstract

In his popular play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) Tom Stoppard's character remarks: "A Chinaman of the T'ang Dinasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher." Such is Stoppard's literary universe: illogical, perplexing, inquiring, uneasy. A trap.