Theater critics and scholars around the world have long admired Jan Kott as, in Michael Holquist's words, "in the fullest sense of the term a man of the theater." In the quarter century since his landmark Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964) appeared in English, Kott has continued to challenge cenceptions of the theater, frequently using Shakespeare's plays as reference points in his broad critical studies. Sparkling with the wit and verbal agility that characterize his writing, Kott's newest volume brings together three of his most important recent essays, each of them grounded in a particular Shakespeare play.