of his professorship at Warsaw University. A poet, translator, and literary critic, he became one of the more prolific essayists of the Polish school in America. He died in Santa Monica, California after a heart attack in 2001. As a theatrical reviewer, Kott received praise for his readings of the classics, and above all of Shakespeare. In his influential volume Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (1964), he interpreted the plays in the light of philosophical and existential experiences of the 20th century, augmented with his own life's story. This autobiographical accent became a hallmark of his criticism, as exemplified in his collection of essays on theater, The Gender of Rosalind. Kott sought to juxtapose Shakespeare with Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett, but his greatest insight came from the juxtaposition of Shakespeare with his own life. He took a similar approach to his reading of Greek tragedy in The Eating of the Gods. Reportedly, Peter Brook's film King Lear and Roman Polanski's Macbeth (both made in 1971) were influenced by Kott's view of Shakespearean high tragedy in relation to the 20th-century "nightmare of history". Another Kott collection of essays, The Memory of the Body: Essays on Theatre and Death, extended his influence beyond theater in the English-speaking world. Kott wrote many books and articles published in American journals such as The New Republic, Partisan Review and The New York Review of Books. Aside from Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, he also wrote about theatre of Japan, Tadeusz Kantor and Jerzy Grotowski. He translated works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Denis Diderot, Eugène Ionesco and Molière into Polish and English. References 1914 births 2001 deaths 20th-century Polish writers Shakespearean scholars Polish male writers Jewish Polish writers Polish theatre critics 20th-century Polish Jews Polish atheists Jewish atheists Herder Prize recipients Polish military personnel of World War II