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 Famous Box Trick The Famous Box Trick The Famous Box Trick (; Star Film Catalogue no. 155.) is a 1898 French short black-and-white silent trick film, directed by Georges Méliès, featuring a stage magician who transforms one boy into two with the aid of an axe. The film, "harks back to stage magic," and, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "can be viewed as a kind of sequel to "The Vanishing Lady" ("Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin", 1896) in that it reprises many of the same elements." A stage magician conjures up a dove which he then places in a box with