Play's opening leaves playwright bound to meddle (9)
I believe the answer is:
interlope
'meddle' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'play's opening leaves playwright bound' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'bound' could be 'lope' (to lope is to travel with bounding stride or bound) and 'lope' is found within the answer.
The remaining letters 'inter' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'to' acts as a link.
(Another definition for interlope that I've seen is " trespass".)