I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.
Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” - there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.
no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era -
it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.
we think the answer is polar bears.
no, seriously! in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’ it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.
of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they? so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless? well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences. and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear? what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity?
and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.
you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR
every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken
Not just an actual bear. A polar bear cub.
Imagine a fully grown man running offstage to be “killed” by a baby polar bear.
“big dick energy” and “men get pegged” are things that can only be enjoyed for a very brief time before they reach like, mainstream twitter where straight people start using them incorrectly to be unironically horny about the most mediocre men on earth
it really is next to impossible to write realistic sibling dialogue, I just passed my brother on the stairs and instead of greeting each other like human beings I said ‘born survivor’ and he said ‘youtube rewind. let’s set it to rewind.’ like you ain’t gonna find that shit in a novel
talking to my dad is a freaking minefield. Today at dinner I asked him if he’d ever been to New York City in the 90′s and he was like, “nope. Only in the 70′s to donate blood for my mom in the hospital while she was dying from leukemia.” I swear I didn’t even know my grandmother had leukemia (may she rest in peace). This is worse than the time I asked him if he’d ever had riding lessons and he said, “not since my childhood lesson pony burned to death in a barn fire in Kentucky.”
he just did it again! I was making small talk while we were carrying in the groceries like, “yeah I have a taser in my purse but I’ve never gotten to use it,” and he goes, “I’ve been tasered before it’s not fun. Neither was waterboarding.”
wtf dad
latest edition:
me: I found a bottle of vic’s vapo rub in the cabinet that expired in 2002 but it was fine.
my dad: Oh I don’t touch that stuff but guys I worked with used it to mask the smell of bodies that’d been dead for a while.
i usually hate true crime documetary type things bc theyre all “lets get into the MIND of the serial killer…. tortured soul” or whatever but i like the buzzfeed unsolved stuff bc theyre just like “what a freak lmao”
things ytp has immortalized as the absolute apexes of comedy:
the sound of glass breaking when something collides with a surface that isnt made of glass
random sharp increases in volume
reversing a word in the middle of it being said
reversing someone running/falling as its happening
audiovisual stuttering
amazingly coherent sentence mixing that makes no sense
screaming
overlaying cdi characters for half a second whenever someone says something like “boy” or “dinner”
Getting random midwestern teenagers into small movie studio levels of video editing & animation by putting CD-I mario wherever the hell they can put him
did you know that if you mock men for opening their hearts and being emotionally vulnerable, I’ll show up at your house and explain in great detail how disappointed i am in you
