Begins by offering a contrast between Shakespeare's current status as one of the best-known and most revered writers in the world and his position in the early 1590s, when his plays were published without attribution of authorship in disposable editions very different from their contemporary equivalents. Notes that the aim of the book as a whole is to track how we have moved, over the course of the centuries, from a situation where Shakespeare's texts were throwaway publications to a situation where copies of the first edition of his collected plays change hands for millions of pounds. Logs the parameters of the book as a whole and explains the logic of the Chronological Appendix.