"BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!" is hilarious and sad. Your observation about Waiting For Godot is so damning really -- you only need to see it once. Of course the Tweet feed has been full of this lately with folks debating just this. Sometimes it is a matter of, well, editing and writing, for lack of a better term. I mean, if it's a boat, and if you meant boat, you'd better write boat, and readers keep thinking you've written about an airplane, maybe the writing needs to be clearer. It is hard to let something loose, free into the wild.

Which leads me to the world of derivative work and the "respect" owed the original creation. In theater, is there ever this debate by the production team or the critics afterward as to whether the play was true to the writer's intent? Does it matter? Do people care?