Egan traces a century of arguments about editing Shakespeare's plays, revealing what's at stake in presenting them to modern readers.

Gabriel Egan began his academic career at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, where, in addition to teaching theatre history and running workshops on the Globe stage, he taught students to print on a replica wooden hand-press using the methods employed in Shakespeare's time. He is the author of Shakespeare and Marx (2004), Green Shakespeare: From Ecopolitics to Ecocriticism (2006) and The Edinburgh Critical Guide to Shakespeare (2007). He edited the play The Witches of Lancashire by Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood (2002), and co-edits the journals Theatre Notebook and Shakespeare.

Introduction; 1. The fall of pessimism and the rise of New Bibliography, 1902-42; 2. New techniques and the Virginian School: New Bibliography, 1939-68; 3. New Bibliography, 1969-79; Intermezzo: the rise and fall of the theory of memorial reconstruction; 4. New Bibliography critiqued and revised, 1980-90; 5. The 'new' New Bibliography: the Oxford Complete Works, 1978-89; 6. Materialism, unediting and version-editing, 1990-99; Conclusion: the twenty-first century; Appendix I. How early-modern books were made: a brief guide; Appendix II. Table of Shakespeare editions up to 1623; Appendix III. Editorial principles of the major twentieth-century Shakespeare editions; Works cited.