Exit, pursued by a...what?
It's Shakespeare's most (in)famous stage direction: "Exit, pursued by a bear." The stage direction appears in Act III, Scene III and marks the death of the character Antigonus as well as the transition between the courtly and pastoral worlds of A Winter's Tale . But the strangeness of this stage direction means that it is not only memorable, it's also notoriously difficult to stage. Modern productions have taken various routes, most of which use new theatrical technologies such as projections, mechanized puppets, or digital sound effects. But how might "Exit, pursued by a bear" have been stage in its original performance? We will explore in this post four possible contemporary stagings of this iconic bear. All of these are theories––while some seem more probable than others, no one has yet found a source (an audience member's written reaction to the play, a registry entry of props specific to A Winter's Tale , or the like) to rule in or rule ...
