I wrote this book in July 2004, as soon as the OP weekend was over, while events were fresh in my mind. I never dreamed then that the Globe experiment would within a decade have blossomed into a world-wide movement; but that is what has happened. ‘Will they do it again next year?’ asked someone (p. 135). ‘I hope they do’, I remarked (p. 169). And they did.

The Romeo production was so well received that the following year saw a six-week run of Troilus and Cressida in OP, directed by Giles Block. No modern English version to distract the actors this time, and the production was again acclaimed. News had travelled, and there were theatre people in the audience from around the world, especially the USA, and when they returned home they began to try out OP for themselves.

In 2006, I received dozens of emails asking me for help, and often sending recordings of first attempts, from actors and directors in New York, Washington, Staunton (Virginia, home of the Blackfriars theatre), and several American university departments. One director put on an evening of OP extracts in a venue off-off-Broadway. I was asked to give talks about OP throughout Europe, in India and Japan, and as far afield as the Shakespeare Society in Melbourne. Early music practitioners, who had been present in goodly numbers in the talkbacks after the Globe performances, were soon in on the act, trying out OP in performances of Dowland, Byrd, and Gibbons, and extending the time-period to as late as Purcell. It was a busy time, and it wasn't long before more productions followed.

The first big event was in 2010: A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Paul Meier at Kansas University, and recorded on both video and audio (commercially available). The following year, Shakespeare scholar and collected-works editor Eric Rasmussen produced an OP Hamlet at the University of Nevada in Reno, directed by Robert Gander, with my actor son Ben – whose interest in OP had grown exponentially after seeing the way it affected the whole of an actor's performance – playing the Dane.