Chris,
You said "Does this glorify the author too much -- make him too godlike?"
On the contrary, it does the opposite. In the picture you paint of Shakespeare's mode d'ecrire, the characters have a life independent of his "plans" for them, such as they may be. And this is common to many, if not most, authors of fictiona nd drama (at least the good ones): they set out with some notion of where they're going, but the characters sieze control and take them somewhere else, as often as not. In this sense, the author is in no way a "god"; he is in some ways relegated to the position of "scribe", reporting on the activities and thoughts of his characters.
In an analogous way, it's my frequent experience, when writing a poem, that I think I know what I am saying (or what I intend to say or what I want to say) but the poem reveals otherwise to me. And it is therefore often the case that the act of writing the poem makes me aware, for the first time, of what I really feel/believe/think.
What this says about the validity of the author's "intentions" I am not quite sure...
(robt)
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