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Much to my own amazement and sheer doggedness I now have the three quotes, the 3 labels, the play and what the 3 labels lead to. I just need to figure out the final last bit of shading now - but my brain is frazzled at the moment, so I'll return to that later.

Having needed a lot of help from this forum with the endgame, I can now agree with the other posters that this puzzle is a thing of true beauty. It seems petty to carp about something this close to genius, but wouldn't 21a reduce the chance for red herrings in the endgame (and parse slightly better) if it began 'Hear'?

Also, can someone explain the wordplay for 27d and 31a (the full wordplay, I mean)?

27d the first 3 letters are 'rousing leaves'. 31a is built using abbreviation (2) cross (4) and (a French plural).

Eventually all complete - but with a slight reservation. My shaded area is quite small defined by 3 "lines" by reading "without" as "excluding" - but is would be quite large, defined differently by 3 "lines" if I were to read "without" as "outside". Ho hum, now, at last, onto the Inquisitor.

I have found parts of quotations by the two writers with short names, but the one by the writer with the longest name is eluding me. I have looked centrally, higher up in the grid, but to no avail yet. Am I looking in the right area?

Yes, you are.

I believe I have almost finished. Authors, quotes, shapes et al but I'm left underwhelmed. I see the leading player says A and B but not without C so I assume the region to be shaded is the overlapping area elliptical or triangular. Is that it? Why all the jumbles? Why the unusual clue order? What have I missed?

Thanks Granama. I'm feeling suitably stupid now about 27d. The across clue whose full wordplay I still can't parse is 31a - beginning 'Ian's...'

Ooh.. well you couldn't hide three x twenty letter quotes in a grid without having jumbles, I think. And the unusual order is to give the pairs of letters which make up the play title. If the across clues were in normal order, we wouldn't have had a chance of sorting 12 pairs, in the wrong order, into a title.

If granama is not around I can explain 31a.
Scottish word for assesses for tax is defintion.
Stamp European gives the four letter string (3+1, at end of entry)
Full wordplay is double homophone I think, young person + arranged, (or performed), as heard on a phone.