I came across the remarkable body of writing produced by Renaissance military theorists while undertaking my doctoral studies at the University of Wales during the 1980s. Maurice J. D. Cockle, a retired captain with the Border Regiment, had painstakingly gathered together the titles of various kinds of prose text for his Bibliography of English Military Books up to 1642 and of Contemporary Foreign Works, carefully supplying details of locations and provenance. This compendium, published in 1900, and limited to 250 copies, remains an invaluable resource for anyone interested in reading about the technical details and ideological trajectory of militarism in late Renaissance Europe. Cockle's book has an introductory note by the historian Charles Oman, and it is surprising that the treatises, pamphlets and manuals listed by Cockle remained of more interest to historians than to literary scholars for much of the twentieth century. John Hale, an inspired historian with a keen interest in the relationship between literature and history, clearly saw the potential this body of work had for an understanding of fictional representations of warfare in the early modern period. His research provides a lucid and compelling guide to the rich variety of Renaissance military writing. As far as I can tell, the first book-length study of the connections that can be made between this prose and the stage was Paul A. Jorgensen's Shakespeare's Military World (1956). Those who have become interested in Shakespeare's representation of militarism rightly acknowledge the immense importance of Jorgensen's work and I was very grateful to receive his advice and support during my own early research.