This article examines the uses and semantics of traps in a farcical Italian co­medy, Giovan Battista della Porta’s Chiappinaria. Instrumental to these traps is a bear-skin costume: three characters wear it, pretending to be bears, and eroding the borderline between human beings and animals. Yet, the farcical repetitions of one and the same trick have very different results. The highly structured, kaleidoscopic, plot of created by a single trapping scheme parallels the practice of trappers to catch real animals. By looking at who gets caught, my analysis evidences that looking at traps in early modern Italian theater can be a useful analytical tool to highlight and to historicize implicit and explicit power-relations and thus to uncover the violent backdrops that elicit the feroci­ous, visceral laughter of farcical comedy in a non-anachronistic way. Moreover, this article also examines the role of uncanny character of the master- trapper in this comedy. A topically subversive figure, a hunter of dubious and repute, he is able to outmaneuver superior forces or powers by his cunning. To a limited extent, this crafty character is an alter ego of the author of Chiappinaria. Yet, beyond this affinity to one of his leading personae, my analysis shows that della Porta (as master trapper) employs various other the strategies in order to capture the attention and goodwill of his potential audiences, enmeshing them into the plot of the comedy. Switching from structural analysis to historical context once more, I suggest that the play was perhaps intended as a captatio benevolentiae for Paolo Regio, bishop of Vico Equense. Keywords: Giovan Battista della Porta (1535-1615), Paolo Regio (1541 – 1607), comedy, farce, tricksters, traps, anthropology, magia naturalis, bears, impresa