Shakespeare Our Contemporary (Norton Library)

This book is a provocative, original study of the major plays of Shakespeare; more than that, however, it is one of the few critical works to have strongly influenced theatrical productions.

Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz are among the many directors who have acknowledged their debt to Jan Kott, finding in his analogies between Shakespearean situations and those in modern life and drama the seeds of vital new stage-conceptions. Readers all over the world―Shakespeare Our Contemporary has been translated into nineteen languages since it appeared in 1961―have similarly found their responses to Shakespeare broadened and enriched. Mary McCarthy called the work "the best, the most alive, radical book about Shakespeare in at least a generation."

Jan Kott, (1914-2001) was a Polish American theater critic and an expert on Shakespeare whose theories influenced some of the most innovative of modern theater directors. Born in Warsaw, he studied at the universities of Warsaw, Paris, and Lodz. Kott returned to Poland shortly before World War II and was drafted into the Polish army. Later he took part in the underground resistance against the Nazi occupation. After teaching Polish literary history at the University of Warsaw and being a visiting professor at Yale, Kott lost his Warsaw post on political grounds. He was granted asylum in the United States in 1969, by which time he had become known in Europe for his writings about Shakespeare. He taught courses in drama, English, and literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1969 to 1983, when he retired.