E. E. Stoll has directed strong words to interpreters of Shakespeare. He attacks those who would separate the writer’s ‘meaning’ from his intention, though he admits that the original intention may not have been fully carried out and that the ‘meaning’ is not to be simply abstracted. If Stoll blurs his case by confusing the merely whimsical commentators with those who may not win universal assent to their views but honestly believe that they are approaching the significance of the works they examine, there is yet no doubt that the warning here given is salutary. It is easy to grow impatient with the dramatist’s complexity, to offer as his ‘meaning’ some part of his total utterance, or indeed unconsciously to adjust a play to fit our own inclinations. We should recognize that a creative writer’s intention may develop during composition, that all of it may never come into his full consciousness, that our perception of his intention can never be sure. The interpreter’s primary duties are to know his own fallibility, to be sceptical of his own simplifications, and yet to strive towards a convincing exposition of what he believes to be true. René Taupin, noting the way in which Hamlet became a starting-point for romantic reverie in nineteenth-century France, observes: ‘What Shakespeare wanted him to be interests only the pedants.’ That is engaging, but it is not criticism.