Free The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare Page A

quick wit and mercurial dash, and actors have generally made the most of their opportunity with the role, while Lance’s fidelity to his dog provides a counterpoint to the inconsistencies of the human affections in the play.
    Lance and Crab were the most widely praised performances in Peter Hall’s production:
    Patrick Wymark as Launce animated his repetitive speeches by a variety of timing and emphasis, and based all on a sympathetic understanding of the large-minded, stubborn character who is yet at the mercy of circumstance. He made the audience wait for words, when he could do so without slowing up his performance, and so invited them to enter his view of the world of the play: correcting Speed for counting “slow of speech” among his maid’s vices, he then looked in blank wonder at the audience so that the following line, “To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue,” was the necessary statement they had been waiting for, an exaggeration which satisfied where it might have fallen dead with its stale wit. 57
    His dog, Crab, took to the stage like a veteran. A small white terrier … he has the priceless theatrical attribute of repose and an uncanny knack of putting on the right expression—even a yawn … Most people, I think, will say they have seen a play about a dog. 58
    Patrick Stewart playing Lance in 1970 gave a richly characterized performance:
    but what makes his [Phillips’] production unforgettable is his amazing vision of Launce (Patrick Stewart) and his dog, Crab. Who would have thought that this servant, usually so crude and vulgar, could so certainly be the play’s sad, dark angel, harsh and sinister, yet with such depth of feeling, and so schematically beautiful as he stands framed in a panel at the back of the stage gravely contemplating the apparent happiness of his employers? 59
    Crab on this occasion was played by Blackie, a good-natured mongrel, who, as Peter Roberts comments, was “a cur of the kind that would win a sneer at Crufts and a very big bone everywhere else”: 60
    He [Stewart] recites most of his lines in the company of a big dog, Blackie, and he needs all his talent and experience to prevent Blackie from stealing several scenes. In one of Launce’s long speeches Blackie emitted a big yawn. It nearly brought the house down. 61
    Critics frequently comment on the resemblance between man and dog. In John Barton’s double bill, it was the dog’s resemblance to the director which struck a number of reviewers, as well as its appearance in
Titus:
    When John Barton assigned the role of Crab against considerable canine opposition to an old English sheepdog named Heidi, there were murmurings in Stratford about “mirror images.” Barton himself now affects a shaggy, rumpled appearance from his grizzled head to his Hush Puppies. * 62
    Richard Moore as Lance in Thacker’s immensely popular production achieved a remarkable comic performance: “a blend of Leonard Rossiter, Tony Hancock and a big-eared Victorian toby jug, never more hilarious than when he is lugubriously berating a dog which,on opening night, stood and implored the audience for rescue, death, anything but this.” 63
    Margaret Ingram’s evocative account concluded,
    But I have not mentioned Launce (Richard Moore) and his dog Crab (Woolly) who perhaps contributed most of all, Launce with his lugubrious humour and Crab who evinced a look between dullness and despair at being confined on a brightly lit stage when he might have been enjoying a dog’s life elsewhere but who nevertheless seemed to appreciate that, this being a British audience, he received the greatest applause of the evening. 64
    Mark Hadfield’s performance in Edward Hall’s production was also singled out: “The most entertaining scenes of
Two Gentlemen
belong to Launce (Mark Hadfield is a fine clown) and his faithful, similarly downbeat mongrel, Crab.” 65 Robert Smallwood described him as a “sad and knowing Launce,” and Cassie’s