History

The history of bear baiting in England extends further back in time to the medieval period. In this blog post, Dr Will Wyeth, Properties Historian at English Heritage, reveals the fascinating history of a certain Spernellus, a bearward from medieval Richmond who appears in official medieval records.

Box Office Bears and 1623 Theatre are in pursuit of Shakespearean bears. Although we don't often connect Shakespeare and bears now, everyone in Tudor or Stuart England would have known or encountered a bear, and they made a fair few memorable cameos in the period’s drama. You may have heard about the bear sweeping across the stage in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: 'Exit pursued by a bear'. At this event we'll be staging and exploring these kinds of moments in Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights, including a devil who disguises himself as a bear, an old man who turns into one, and a sexy hero who first attracts his girlfriend by showing off his ability to fight a bear. Join the Box Office Bears team and 1623 actors for a playful and thoughtful exploration of Shakespearean (and others’!) bears as we enter their playworlds, performed by, or as, a bear, returning to a time when bears fundamentally shaped popular entertainment during this period.

We’ll be at HistFest 2023 with a stall of bear-related delights on April 29^th - 30^th at the British Library.

We're taking over Eastgate House, Rochester, for an afternoon on the 14th February.  Join us in the glorious Elizabethan building, once home to the mayor, for an open house from 1pm to 5pm with stations through the rooms of the house: drama, music, fencing, and virtual-reality exploration (with www.middlingculture.com). And cartoon bears. We'll also be giving a talk at 6pm.

I have frequently been asked when I talk about the BOB project, “did the bears hibernate”? We can answer this question in two ways: by looking at what we know about modern bears, and by looking at archival accounts.

Two months ago, I had the privilege of travelling with some early modern bear bones from Oxford to Nottingham. These bear bones were found during excavations by MOLA in Southwark in London, and were analysed for zooarchaeology and isotopes in Nottingham, before being taken to Oxford to be sampled for ancient DNA analysis.