[Foreword] Finally, as project director, I must stress that this book could not have been produced without the encouragement and generous assistance afforded by National Endowment for the Humanities and the three corporate sponsors: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Exxon Corporation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[Author's Preface] Readers are now invited to participate in that age by embarking on their own voyage of discovery, a voyage made possible by the treasures of the Folger exhibited in the pages that follow.

[Prologue] Shakespeare himself--and Tom Stoppard--to the contrary, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not dead.

Let Ben Jonson, who contributed to it the noblest commemorative poem in the language, have the last word:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

[Epilogue] Such tricks hath strong imagination . . . .