The Winter's Tale play contains one of the most famous Shakespearean stage directions: "Exit, pursued by a bear", presaging the offstage death of Antigonus. It is not known whether Shakespeare used a real bear from the London bear-pits, or an actor in bear costume. The Royal Shakespeare Company, in one production of this play, used a large sheet of silk which moved and created shapes, to symbolise both the bear and the gale in which Antigonus is travelling. One comic moment in the play deals with a servant not realising that poetry featuring references to dildos is vulgar, presumably from not knowing what
The Bear (play) basis for operas by Dominick Argento ("The Boor", 1957) and William Walton ("The Bear", 1967). It was also the inspiration for the second act of the 1979 musical "A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine". The Bear (play) The Bear: A Joke in One Act, or The Boor (, 1888), is a one-act comedic play written by Russian author Anton Chekhov. The play was originally dedicated to Nikolai Nikolaevich Solovtsov, Chekhov's boyhood friend and director/actor who first played the character Smirnov. The play takes place in the drawing room of Elena Ivanovna Popova's estate on the seven-month anniversary of