The introduction sets out the aims and methodology for this study of ‘Wartime Shakespeare’. It proposes that wartime theatre is mediated by networks of production and reception that control meaning and impact. It outlines in detail theatre’s production agents, reception agents, and structures of control that collectively constitute the methodological framework for this study. The introduction argues that a recognition of these networks necessitates a reappraisal of wartime theatre and the critical terminology used to discuss it, including the relevance of binary labelling, such as pro-war/anti-war or conservative/radical. Wartime performances of Shakespeare, rather than offering ‘fixed’ or clear-cut applications to conflict, are malleable and can accommodate a range of different uses and interpretations. This book’s approach is relevant not just for Shakespearean theatre, but for wartime theatre more broadly and, with some adjustment, to theatre during peacetime. The prologue also considers the ‘origins’ of wartime Shakespeare by offering a short account of what is probably the first documented occasion during which one of Shakespeare’s plays was used in direct application to a wartime crisis: the performance of the ‘deposyng and kyllyng of Kyng Rychard the Second’ on 7 February 1601 at the Globe Theatre during the Nine Years’ War (1593–1603) with Ireland.