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 Prophetess (play) chorus, dumbshow, and Marlovain bombast suggest a work of the previous generation of dramas. It is possible that "The Prophetess" is a reworking of the lost play "Diocletian" from 1594. The play contains spectacular elements; critics have wondered exactly how the entrance of Delphia and Drusilla in II,iii, "in a Throne drawn by Dragons," could have been staged. The Prophetess (play) The Prophetess is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. The play was licensed for performance by Sir