This chapter offers a snapshot of detente in a downward spiral, illustrating just how fragile it ultimately proved to be, how susceptible it was to the logic of superpower rivalry, and how utterly dependent it was on domestic variables – especially in the United States. With Nixon's resignation in August 1974, detente – never stable – began to unravel. Crises in Cyprus and Africa, as well as the passage of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which effectively denied the Soviet Union its Most Favored Nation status and further dampened the already dim prospects for Soviet–American trade, aggravated tensions between Moscow and Washington. Even the successful conclusion of the Helsinki Conference in the summer of 1975 failed to restore trust between the superpowers. Brezhnev's physical and mental decline contributed to a sense of paralysis in Soviet foreign policy. The Cold War returned by default.

The Conclusion briefly addresses the Caroline publication of history plays, introducing three important points that clarify and expand the book’s main approach. First, by examining John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck and Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor, it shows how Caroline playbooks regularly use their dedications, addresses to readers, and commendatory verses to put forward local readings of the histories they contain. Second, it suggests that patterns of investment shifted during the Caroline period and that dramatists and companies seem to become more involved in controlling the publication of their plays than in earlier periods. Finally, it evaluates the market for first and reprint editions, proposing that first-edition history plays catered to a demand for novelty and political relevance, whereas the reprinted history play editions published by Nathanial Butter and John Norton helped to establish an emerging canon of history plays that has continuing significance today.