The creator of the magnificent poems Santa Maria della Salute and Among awareness and the dream, the playwright of works such as Maxim Crnojević and Pera of Segedin, the famous Laza Kostić was a pioneer in everything he touched! There is not a single Serbian writer, musician, or painter who excelled in as many diverse disciplines as Laza Kostić! A theatre critic, polyglot, and one of the finest orators of his time, he earned a doctorate in law at the age of 25, in Latin, in Pest. He devoted fifty years to the study of Shakespeare, more than anyone else in his era. He translated Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet into Serbian, and organised the 300th anniversary of the Bard’s birth in Novi Sad—thus making the “Serbian Athens” one of only six cities in Europe to mark Shakespeare’s 300 th anniversary! For the occasion, he composed and sent an Ode to Shakespeare to the Shakespeare Library in Stratford. He was also a music critic, diplomat, national tribune of the people, patriot, philosopher, translator, the first president of the Association of Journalists of Serbia (1881), a sportsman, and the inaugural president of today’s Rowing Club “Danubius”—then known as the “First Association of Firefighting, Rowing and Strengthening” (1872)—as well as an amateur actor.