SHAKSPER 1999: Re: Winters Tale and the Bear

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 11/23/99 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2062  Tuesday, 23 November 1999.

[1]     From:   Werner Broennimann <Werner.Broennimann@unibas.ch>
        Date:   Monday, 22 Nov 1999 17:59:41 +0000
        Subj:   SHK 10.2021 Re: Winters Tale and the Bear

[2]     From:   Judith Matthews Craig <je-mc@apex2000.net>
        Date:   Monday, 22 Nov 1999 15:23:04 -0600
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.2043 Re: Winters Tale and the Bear


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Werner Broennimann <Werner.Broennimann@unibas.ch>
Date:           Monday, 22 Nov 1999 17:59:41 +0000
Subject: Re: Winters Tale and the Bear
Comment:        SHK 10.2021 Re: Winters Tale and the Bear

Ingeborg Boltz has the following footnote in her bilingual edition of
The Winter's Tale (Englisch-deutsche Studienausgabe der Dramen
Shakespeares, Tübingen 1986):

Exit, pursued by a bear: One of the most famous authentic stage
directions in Sh which has raised various question about dramaturgic
function and stage practice.  The controversy of whether Sh's theatre
group used a tame bear or an actor in bear costume has in recent
research usually been decided in favour of the second.  It is true that
in his examination of the bear episode in Mucedorus G.F. Reynolds posits
that the sudden success of an old play, which was re-staged with some
additions at court around 1609 or 1610, was most likely due to the
antics of a particularly adept tame bear.  Reynolds claims that such
bears appeared in dance and acrobatic forms of entertainment, and that
both Sh's bear in WT and Ben Jonson's bears in his Masque of Oberon
(1611) made use of such animals ("Mucedorus, Most Popular Elizabethan
Play?" in J.W. Bennett et al. eds., Studies in the English Renaissance,
New York, 1959).  But these are only speculations, while there is
sufficient evidence that in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays and masques
bears were impersonated by actors (in Henslowe's list of props a bear
fur is mentioned).  Furthermore, the comic effect of the bear scene
(which is also crucial in Mucedorus) would have been much more easily
achieved and effective using a real actor rather than a tame animal,
however well trained.

Werner, in vain pursuit of Ingeborg's elegant German

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Judith Matthews Craig <je-mc@apex2000.net>
Date:           Monday, 22 Nov 1999 15:23:04 -0600
Subject: 10.2043 Re: Winters Tale and the Bear
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.2043 Re: Winters Tale and the Bear

Peter Hyland writes:

<For clear theatrical reasons it has always seemed to me <that THE
<WINTER'S TALE demands a man in a bear suit at this <point, and one who
is
<as creakily obvious as possible. This is, after all, the <pivotal
moment
<that turns a tragedy of jealousy into pastoral romance, <underscored by
<the immediate switch from verse to prose. The play <reminds us again of
<its own artifice through the figure of Time in the scene <that follows.
<The Clown's description of the bear devouring Antigonus <would surely
be
<rather less comic and much harder to take if he had been <pursued by a
<real bear than if he had been pursued by a man in a <pantomime outfit.

I liked this comment a lot, as it explains the "creaky descent" of
Jupiter in Cymbeline much more satisfactorily than I had thought of it
before.  Jupiter descends and transforms Posthumus' tragedy into a
comedy, reminding us of the artifice of all false religiosity.

Thanks, Peter!

Judy Craig


about SHAKSPER | current postings | submitted papers | browse SHAKSPER | search SHAKSPER
  
Copyright © 2002, Hardy M. Cook, design by Eric Luhrs. All rights reserved.