This book is intended as an introduction in two senses. Firstly it is an introduction in a sense available to Shakespeare's contemporaries: that of a first guide to a topic. Readers in sixteenth-century London could purchase ‘introductions’ to fields from astrology to Welsh, and from swimming to dying well. Like these, I have tried not to assume existing expertise or familiarity: I have wanted the book to be self-standing, acting as an encouragement and guide to further reading and investigation via ‘Where next?’ sections after each chapter. Each chapter covers a range of examples with a focus on those plays most frequently studied. The emphasis of this volume, unlike the many other great introductory guides that are currently available, is that it engages less with facts than with critical approaches to Shakespeare's plays – with the question of what we ‘do’ when we read or study Shakespeare. And I have also thought of it as an introduction in a more recent sense: ‘the action of introducing or making known personally’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Meet Shakespeare ('s plays): I think you'll find you have some things in common. I hope you hit it off.

Lots of students – particularly at Hertford College, Oxford, at the Department for Continuing Education in the University of Oxford, and at the Bread Loaf School of English – will find this material familiar, either because they've heard me rehearse parts of it in different forms or on different occasions, or because they recognise their own ideas here too.