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
Orestes Pursued by the Furies Orestes Pursued by the Furies Orestes Pursued by the Furies is an event from Greek mythology that is a recurring theme in art depicting Orestes. In the "Iliad", the king of Argos, Agamemnon, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the Gods to assure good sailing weather to Troy. In "Agamemnon", the first play of Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus as revenge for sacrificing Iphigenia. In "The Libation Bearers", the second play of the Orestia, Agamemnon's son Orestes returns home to take revenge on his mother for murdering his father. Orestes ultimately does