Shakespeare

The Box Office Bears team share some news about recent publications and the announcement of our forthcoming monograph, Box Office Bears: Bears and Baiting in Early Modern England.

Curious about why bears, performance, and the past are so closely intertwined?

Join the Box Office Bears team, the sports entertainment company Wrestling Resurgence, and like-minded collaborators, for an afternoon exploring the surprising role of bears and other animals in popular performance—historically and today. The day will include talks, discussion and practical elements, including wrestling and drama activities. Whether you are a theatre lover, wrestling enthusiast, combat aficionado, Shakespeare fanatic, or all the above and more, this hands (and paws) on workshop will have something for everyone.

In the last week of September 2023, the Box Office Bears team worked with the fabulous 1623 Theatre Company to explore a multitude of bears in early modern plays. We ran through the texts in the morning, workshopped them in the afternoon and then performed them for the public in the evening. This post offers some reflections on the process.

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.

What can the bone of an adult bear tell us about the life it led and the world around it?

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