Authors Intentions

Commedia Delle Arte is maybe not such a great example here either, coz a lot of that was about improvisation which means - yep, interpretation. Yes its true that new actors would be trained to take over existing roles within a company and play a particular character that was very well defined with strict guidelines, but it's also true that the shows were not really scripted except in the sense that they had well-known comic routines. They would tell the same story, with well defined characters and routines known as 'lazzi' (spelling?) but the actual manner of telling would evolve and become custom-made to the skills of the particular performer. They didn't really have a director, but the actors of the troupe would be responsible for the interpretation of the well-known stories. And because the characters were so well-known and their status to each other was so well defined, they could easily interact through a performance of a new completely improvised story with no script if they wanted to. So I guess you could say the characters had intentions, but the actors were free to improvise and interpret how they liked. And there wasn't really an author as such to have an intention. These were traditional stories that got handed down but could be adapted and modified to suit the occasion. Plenty of room to reinterpret and introduce their own intents.