Abstract
We can identify Shakespeare's intentions best when they are not clear, where he hesitates over a speech prefix, or introduces a character to whom he then gives no lines, or when he cracks a joke and feels the need to explain it. Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels's case that meaning and intention are one offers a thought-provoking alternative to the anti-intentionalist dead-end that has too long been the default position of theoretically-minded critics. Not even Derrida denied the possibility of literary intention. This article gives several examples of Shakespeare puzzling over his intentions (mainly from the two early quartos of Romeo and Juliet), and suggests that critical editions of his works that attempt to avoid authorial agency and intention altogether are likely to fall into incoherence. Lastly, when Dogberry, Mistress Quickly, and Elbow fall into malapropisms, they say what they do not mean, and intend what they do not say. Getting the jokes requires getting what is intended.
