The Introduction sets out the critical context and core arguments of Experiencing Shakespeare’s Theatres. It explains that the book offers a new account of how playwrights like Shakespeare crafted their plays for demanding and varied commercial audiences. Rediscovering the many forms of judgement practised in the early modern playhouse, it investigates influences from the classical tradition and grammar school classroom to ballad and jest culture. Where prior studies have often treated ‘the judicious’ as a self-contained subset of playgoers, it reveals the variety of careful judgements made in the theatre by a wide range of playgoers. It shows that judgement and pleasure were not mutually exclusive but could be simultaneous elements of the same response. It offers an overview of the following chapters, including one tracing the wider context of pleasure and judgement, and specific chapters devoted to parts of a play that were especially subject to judgement and generative of pleasure: spectacle, words, plot, and actorly technique.