Ursine Transitions: An Analysis of the Role of the Bear Attack as a Transitionary Force in The Winter’s Tale and Beyond

Alison R. Liwosz
Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:30:00 PDT

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale features a curiously specific bear among the pastoral romantic comedy, a bear that chases a character off stage and ends up eating him and another character. This bear’s symbolism and significance to the narrative will be the focus of this essay. This event occurs in the simple stage direction “Exit, pursued by bear” to close out the third act and court setting of the play. A description of the murders come from a character introduced from the pastoral latter half of the narrative, with the bear acting as the hinge between the two. The bear also follows the trend in Shakespeare’s later romantic plays of tying feminine power and agency to mystical and spiritual forces, connected by ancient observations of bear mothers seemingly licking their cubs into form. Through the influence of ancient myth and classic literature, it also indicates as well as act out a powerful and sudden breakaway from the standards of storytelling. This breakaway expands upon deeper environmentalist bearings at stake in the play. I then connect these links and concerns of the bear symbolism to the modern media of the 2023 film “Cocaine Bear” and William Kotzwinkles’s novel The Bear Went Over the Mountain, where the title animals being bears is crucial to how they create sudden, unexpected ripples in the plot and writing.