<quote>Exit, pursued by a bear</quote>

The appearance of the bear in the last stage direction of Act 3, Scene 3 of The Winter’s Tale is possibly the most well-known stage direction in the history of Shakespeare’s plays. It occurs after a courtier, Antigonus, abandons the baby Perdita in Bohemia after fleeing the court of Leontes. Antigonus is abruptly chased off-stage by a bear and mauled to death, at which point the Shepherd appears and confirms to the audience that Antigonus really has been killed. At this moment, halfway through the play, The Winter’s Tale transforms into a comedy of love and reunion, abruptly shifting from the tragic tale of jealously and betrayal with which it begin. Though it is a brutal way for Antigonus to die, exit, pursued by a bear prompts a necessary catharsis for the audience, allowing the viewer to relax, laugh, and shift their mind to the new comedic tone.

The Bear in Elizabethan England

I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain, but, I warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it that it passed.The Merry Wives of Windsor 1.1.269

To the audience attending Shakespeare’s plays, a bear would have been the most well-known wild creature. Bears were a very common form of entertainment and a popular bear-baiting ring, the Bear Garden, operated near the Globe Theatre. Much like theatre, bear-baiting appealed to both the upper and lower classes, and it was a favourite pastime of royalty and commoners alike. Bear-baiting became known as a uniquely English activity and was so entwined with popular culture that a celebrity bear of the time, Sackerson, was mentioned by name in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. The bears involved in this popular blood sport were perceived as creatures of sheer might and natural power, but in the context of bear-baiting and its popularity, bears also became humourous animals.

Tragedy to Comedy

Antigonus, Child, & Bear, painted by John Opie, engraving by John Hall. 1794. Folger Digital Image Collection. Public Domain.

Thou meet'st with things dying, I with things newborn.The Winter’s Tale 3.3.1554

Broadly speaking, themes of life and death are incorporated in a play to create separation between tragedy and comedy. Death features heavily in the first half of The Winter’s Tale and this focus ends only when Antigonus is killed by the bear. Literary scholar Andrew Gurr suggests that Antigonus’ death marks the precise moment The Winter’s Tale becomes a comedy. To Philip Goldfarb Styrt, Antigonus’ mauling and death is a kind of sacrifice, allowing space for new life to begin since Perdita, who does survive her abandonment, returns to her rightful place as a princess by the end of the play. The suddenness of the bear’s appearance also serves a dramatic function. Gurr discusses that, when confronted with something frightening, the audience experiences a fear reaction (424); once the shock is over, they are relieved and often laugh. The viewer’s mind is therefore ready for the complete tonal shift that comes directly after Antigonus’ death.

Since any staging of The Winter’s Tale would struggle to incorporate a real bear just for one stage direction, the appearance of the bear also plays into the humour and allows the audience some catharsis. As described by the Shepherd, the bear is enormous and incredibly powerful, strong enough to tear out Antigonus’ shoulderbone (3.3.1536). The reality is that the bear was more than likely played by an actor in a costume, and the discrepancy between the described size and what the audience has just seen as the bear is a dramatic wink at the viewer. However, scholars have not ruled out the King’s Men using an actual bear for performances, given the availability of live animals from the nearby Bear Garden.

The dramatic shock of Antigonus’ death releases the audience from the tension of the preceding tragedy of the first half of The Winter’s Tale, in which a lifelong friendship and a happy marriage are destroyed by baseless jealousy. While the stage direction itself has taken on a life of its own, exit, pursued by a bear represents Shakespeare’s deep knowledge of dramatic tricks and conventions, and how those principles can be used to guide an entire audience right from one genre to another.

Key Print Sources Hagen, Tanya and Sally-Beth MacLean. How to Track a Bear in Southwark: A Learning Module. Medieval English Theatre, vol. 37, 2015, p. 90. De Somogyi, Nick. Shakespeare and the Naming of Bears. New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, 2018, pp. 216–234. De Somogyi, Nick. Shakespeare and the Three Bears. New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2, 2011, pp. 99–113. Gurr, Andrew. The Bear, the Statue, and Hysteria In <title level="m">The Winter’s Tale. Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 4, 1983, pp. 420–425. McPartland, Perry. References to the Doubling of Autolycus and the Bear in Shakespeare’s <title level="m">The Winter’s Tale.Notes and Queries, vol. 66, no. 3, 10 Sep. 2019, pp. 454–457. Styrt, Philip Goldfarb. Resistance Theory, Antigonus, and the Bear in <title level="m">The Winter’s Tale. SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, vol. 57, no. 2, 2017, pp. 389–406.

Key Online Sources Bear Garden. REED, University of Toronto, https://library2.utm.utoronto.ca/otra/reed/content/bear-garden. Accessed 6 Oct. 2023.

Image Source Opie, John, painter. Engraved by John Hall. Antigonus, Child, & Bear. 1794. Engraving. Folger Digital Collections. Call number ART File S528w1 no.21.https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img29382.