SOURCE: Pitcher, John. “‘Fronted with the Sight of a Bear’: Cox of Collumpton and The Winter's Tale.” Notes and Queries 41, No. 1 (March 1994): 47-53.

In this essay, Pitcher uses an account of the staging of Day's Cox of Collumpton to illuminate how Elizabethan audiences might respond to the sight of a bear in Day's play and others.

The challenge of how to show the bear in Act III of The Winter's Tale continues to put modern directors to the test. Roger Warren, in his account of Sir Peter Hall's production at the National Theatre in 1988, reports that Hall thought that the bear

should be ‘grotesque and take the breath away’ and that ‘we should not look at it for too long’; but in the event his bear appeared in dim light at the back of the stage on its hind legs, enveloped Antigonus in its arms, and dragged him...