Exit Pursued by a Bugbear : Stage Renderings of Mythical Moments in The Winter's Tale

This paper takes as its starting‑point three particular moments in The Winter’s Tale (Exit pursued by a bear (3.1), Time (4.1) and the Statue scene (5.3) – moments that have become famous, or infamous, even mythical, by being so difficult to stage1. Having worked intensively with The Winter’s Tale throughout the academic year 2012/13 (among other things directing it with two consecutive groups of students of English here at Lund University, Sweden), the present writer has had ample reason to reflect on the problems of stagecraft, in theory as well as in practice. It seems natural to base this paper on some professional productions that provided the inspiration for our stagings, and also show something of the creative, emotional and intellectual process behind them for director and students ; how the choices we made bore a relation to previous, professional productions, and to what extent we chose to (or chose not to) align ourselves with their treatment of some mythical moments.