Home | Away

Bear facts:  a brief followup

Apparently there is some dispute, in the comments to Wednesday’s post, about the origin of the phrase, “Exit, raped by a bear.” Brian Cook mentioned it (or did he cite it?  I can never keep that distinction straight), provoking Njorl to ask whether “exit” was a noun or a verb.

Well, that was very funny, Njorl, but in fact, “Exit, raped by a bear” is Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction.  It occurs in A Winter’s Tale, Act IV, scene iv, just after Polixenes and Perdita have that conversation about cross-pollinating plants:

You went to jail in the summer.  It is
Fall now. You will have stories to cover—
Iraqi elections and suicide
Bombers, threats biological and the
Iranian nuclear program.  Out West,
Where you vacation, the aspens will
Already be turning.  They turn in clusters,
Because their roots connect them.  Come back to
Work, Perdita—and life.

Exit, raped by a bear.

I hope that settles matters.  Now, who’s up for a fun-filled modern staging of Coriolanus?

Posted by on 11/04 at 03:48 PM

  1. Shouldn’t that be “Exeunt”?

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  05:18 PM

  2. Nah, only Polixenes leaves.  Perdita cuts a deal.

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  05:19 PM

  3. Yeah, yeah, Michael. We all memorized that passage in high school. Kudos to you for recalling it verbatim: Not sure I could have.

    I’m much more interested in the text behind the text, to be honest. How many people credit Shakespeare sufficiently with the prescience necessary to have come up with all that stuff about “Bohemian King poisoning-related program activities?”

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/04  at  05:26 PM

  4. Hm, not the most striking use of language by him. Though the censors must have had to approve the language. Even the best must have minor works to offset the great.

    I’d like to see Coriolanus staged in a modern setting…

    But better still would be a revival of the great, but poorly known, Antiochus; the metaphorical tale of imperial overreach and the Parthian revolt bears repeating, although casting young Patricus the Roman plebe who foreshadows the rise of the Republic is hard.
    It is a key but minor role, amidst the broader tale of corruption, greed and betrayal in the decadent empire. A good actor though would have fun with Vepres, the somewhat anachronistic patrician Roman envoy to the east, who represents all that is wrong with the west, and the sinister Quercus who slowly corrupts Vepres and tries to seduce him with thoughts of kingship.
    The actual main eastern characters appear almost as puppets screening the shadow play of the apparent minor visitors from the republic which tell the real story.

    I particularly like the play on language with Votum, the servant of Quercus, who sacrifices himself in the penultimate act.

    Posted by Steinn Sigurdsson  on  11/04  at  05:40 PM

  5. Didn’t John Irving cover this ground in Hotel New Hampshire?

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  06:48 PM

  6. How many people credit Shakespeare sufficiently with the prescience necessary to have come up with all that stuff about “Bohemian King poisoning-related program activities?”

    Well, certainly not me, because I’ve always believed that A Winter’s Tale was written by Kevin Bacon.

    Posted by Michael  on  11/04  at  07:06 PM

  7. Surely it was Marlowe who said, “They that love not bears and tobacco are fools”?

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  07:08 PM

  8. Oi, Michael, I saw you change that comment.

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  07:09 PM

  9. Damn!  Busted.  Slolernr’s right—the comment originally read “was written by Pynchon.” No, only kidding.  It said “was written by Raleigh.” But I thought that was just too bizarre—and would be sure to provoke the inevitable, “hey, wasn’t Raleigh dead by then?  Like Lorne Greene?”

    Posted by Michael  on  11/04  at  07:18 PM

  10. I shall cherish it forever, like an ephemeral philatelic error.

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  07:30 PM

  11. Why yes, Sven, he did.

    Posted by  on  11/04  at  07:40 PM

  12. Well, I just heap’d error on error, because Raleigh outlived Shakespeare by two years.  And Lorne Greene wasn’t even born until 1623.

    Whereas Count Novakula was already in his third century.  Amazing true facts!

    Posted by Michael  on  11/04  at  08:26 PM

  13. So you’re saying that Shakespeare was a cultural conservative in the modern Republican style?  Isn’t that perhaps a tad ahistorical?

    Posted by bitchphd  on  11/04  at  08:39 PM

  14. True confession: I once edited a comment I made on my blog, changing the phrase “fetid, sickly green, suppurating ass-boil” to read “Senator John Cornyn.”

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/04  at  08:44 PM

  15. Now, wait a second.  It’s perfectly acceptable to edit a comment within twenty seconds of posting it on your own blog, because you’re still composing.  I say so.

    And Dr. B., you want right-wing Shakespeare?  I got your right-wing Shakespeare right here, courtesy of Ken Adelman.

    Yes, that website and that organization are real.

    Posted by Michael  on  11/04  at  08:52 PM

  16. I’m soooo glad I wasn’t sipping a drink when I read this.

    Posted by Elayne Riggs  on  11/04  at  11:36 PM

  17. I can’t think of much of anything witty to say, but to note that with Alito there will exist a Catholic majority in the Gang of 9 (Supreme Court).

    Ave mutha-f-n Maria (recently seen in Chi-town underpass)

    Posted by Mister Toad  on  11/05  at  12:03 AM

  18. OMG, Michael,

    I followed that MoversAndShakespeare link...I think my head just exploded.  Who knew, for example, that Shakespeare offered “ancient wisdom”? 

    And I never guessed how useful Shakespeare could be in executive training…

    The Adelmans select the most apt Shakespeare play to fit the program’s purpose. For leadership and ethics, they draw on Henry V, for change management, Taming of the Shrew, for risk management and diversity, Merchant of Venice and for crisis management, Hamlet.

    I would have thought that Merchant wasn’t exactly a shining example of “diversity management” (though one can imagine the concluding exercise: “True or false: hath not a Jew eyes?").  And last I checked, Hamlet fell a bit short in the crisis management category.

    I wonder if they use Titus Andronicus for anger management sessions.

    Posted by  on  11/05  at  12:09 AM

  19. Ain’t that stuff amazing, Ben?  And to think—it’s all the work of “Cakewalk” Adelman and his wife Carol.

    Don’t forget to check out Cokie Roberts in costume, too!  And if you look closely here, you can see Donald Rumsfeld, far stage right (our left).

    I just couldn’t make this shit up.  Or any famous passages from The Winter’s Tale, IV.iv., either.

    Posted by  on  11/05  at  12:31 AM

  20. My last workplace “off-site” hewed pretty closely to The Tempest, actually.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/05  at  12:44 AM

  21. There are Tempest-like offices: The King, Deep Pockets Proprietor; Supervisor Wizard, Prospero; conniving middle-management Antonio and Sebastians attempting to overthrow them; ambitious sexy newbies Ferdinand and Miranda; old stoner-for-life Gonzalo; effete office swish Ariel; and a crew of Calibans in maintenance. 

    Viva Gonzalo

    Posted by Mister Toad  on  11/05  at  01:22 AM

  22. Stephano!
    Makin’ copies!

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/05  at  01:38 AM

  23. Change management—changing another person, changing one’s self, and one’s institution—via Taming of the Shrew.

    AWESOME!  Sign me up!

    Posted by bitchphd  on  11/05  at  02:52 AM

  24. How’d “Exit, pursued by a bear” become morphed into “Exit, raped by a bear”? Google produces 35,600 hits for the former, zilch for the latter— which means that their bot hasn’t crawled this page yet.

    Posted by  on  11/05  at  02:58 AM

  25. Whoops, seems I missed irony tags!

    * * * * * *

    However, if you’re going to have corporations at all, and they’re going to have corporate training, it might as well be based on
    Shakespeare. Makes as much sense as using Ancient Chinese Wisdom about the Art of War.

    Posted by  on  11/05  at  03:08 AM

  26. Funnily, my friend Mike Bishop just had a story published, “Bears Discover Smut,” here:

    http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/bishop/index.html

    D

    Posted by Murph  on  11/05  at  01:29 PM

  27. What sort of Shakespearean Villains might the various BushCo boys be cast as? It would be too facile to say Iago, methinx; besides the malicious but clever Iago has such a great wit. (o yeah who is brave enough to hail Iago)

    Edmund from King Lear perhaps: Bush Jr. could perhaps do that with much practice, though switching to comedy, one could see Bush Jr. also as like Andrew AgueCheek to Cheney’s Uncle Toby--with some fundie doing Malvolio: can’t think who might be suited to Feste (certainly not that fat biotch Hale). Turning to the Tempest again, Antonio and Sebastian seem right out of central casting for some Ivy League types of insider GOP attorneys: Il Duce Scalia, machiavel ala theocrat, especially would seem prime Antonio material, now with his sidekick Alito as Sebastian--eloquent malevolent precursors to Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har more or less.

    Posted by Mister Toad  on  11/05  at  01:39 PM

  28. We saw King Richard III at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer; the malevolent glee of Richard as he limped about, wreaking havoc in his greedy quest for power could sorta kinda mirror Bush the Younger.  The Duke of Buckingham, who became Richard’s “trusted advisor,” sure as hell had some Rovian maneuvers!  In fact, if you’ve a Complete Works to hand, just open to any page and pick a quote, it’ll work for today’s government.

    Posted by  on  11/05  at  03:10 PM

  29. Why do i keep hearing that Snagglepuss voice in my head??  “Exit stage right”??? mmmmm

    note: They last performed Coriolanus at the OSF in Ashland in 1996 i believe.

    Posted by  on  11/05  at  07:29 PM

  30. A” fun-filled modern staging of Coriolanus?”

    On ice, of course. But when Disney copyrights all those Shakespeare characters, we’ll all be in trouble.

    Come on, if you want to cast this Bush bunch as Shakespearean villians, you really have to run them through the Disneyfier first. Two-dimensional, the lot of them.

    Posted by Ron Sullivan  on  11/05  at  09:41 PM

  31. I agree with comment 24.  I always thought it was “Exit pursued by bear.” Or at least this was the stage direction in the version I had.

    Posted by Isaac  on  11/06  at  01:28 AM

  32. Ah, Ron, funny that you mention Disney.  Check out the November 7 post!  And Isaac, to get the bear joke you have to read Wednesday’s “Bear Life” post and comments.  At least that’s the way it works on this endlessly self-referential blog.

    Polixenes’ speech, though, is real.  Scholars have long debated whether Shakespeare really believed that aspens turn in clusters, or whether he was commenting obliquely on the intrigues of the Stuart court.

    Posted by  on  11/07  at  09:24 AM

  33. An inquiry from the cheap seats for you, Doc Mike:

    Given all the sympathy you regularly espouse for Iran and Iraq, and for black athletes, I have wondered if you were not sympathetic to some extent with Islam itself. While I do not support BushCo and object to how they handled the Iraqi crisis, few would doubt, apres-9-11, that the radical muslims do present a threat to America, and indeed to all people and nations who uphold secular values.  Why aren’t eastern seaboard academics addressing Islamic absurdities and brutalities?  There exists among the literati this typical marxist sympathy for the “oppressed,” and part of that is a willingness to forgive countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran or Jordan or Afghanistan, where women do not drive (or generally own property or even work), and maimings and executions for like adultery and other “moral” crimes still occur. Feminists and liberals who are “soft” on Islam also might consider what the Saudi or Taliban Imams think of abortion or lesbian rights (hint: think al jazeera). Indeed, fundamentalist Islam may be said to pose one of the greatest threats to secular democracy.  I suspect Thomas Jefferson would agree with that.

    Posted by Ibrahim Malik Ibn Toad  on  11/07  at  03:27 PM

  34. Why aren’t eastern seaboard academics addressing Islamic absurdities and brutalities? 

    Yes,

    Michael,

    why

    aren’t

    they?

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/07  at  03:48 PM

  35. Given all the sympathy you regularly espouse for Iran and Iraq

    Quoi?

    Posted by Michael  on  11/07  at  06:03 PM

  36. You have failed to call for their eradication.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  11/07  at  06:05 PM

  37. Well, that’s going a bit far. Kinder, gentler mega-gulags for the muslim radicals, and beaucoup ‘Zine--Thorazine that is---or perhaps some anti-zealot “reinforcement ware” (with other models available: Xtian, Katholic, Maoist-Postmod, etc.) implanted behind an ear and daily readings from like Quine; chants from the works of Percy Biotch Shelley, etc.

    Posted by Mister Toad  on  11/07  at  06:16 PM

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: Football Saturday

Previous entry: 35 and counting

<< Back to main