The Winter’s Tale

The Winter’s Tale contains Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, ‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’ For years, scholarly debate has raged (not really, but people do wonder) as to whether early productions used a real bear from the London bear pits or a person dressed-up as a bear. I was keen to use a bear as the cover image for this one – I like bears; if I have a spirit animal, it’s a bear – so I went out and bought various little plastic bear figures, but no matter which one I photographed, I found the effect to be boring. So, I thought back to the lone production of the play I had seen – outdoors during the summer in a small park – and remembered that one of the characters (Hermione, as it turns out) is transfigured into a statue and then brought back to life. From there it was a short mental to leap to the lovely little ceramic doll’s head you see here. I think I found her at the St. Lawrence flea market here in Toronto. Though her actual vintage is not clear, she has a pleasing 1940s look to her. The Winter’s Tale also features one of the earliest uses of the word ‘dildo,’ but I just wasn’t going to go there – besides, consumer demand for miniature dildos is notoriously low, so it seemed like a futile thing to go looking for.