LANCE                        Now come I to my father: ‘Father, your blessing.’ Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father–

[He kisses the shoe]

Well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now, like a wold-woman! Well, I kiss her–

[He kisses the other shoe]

Why there ’tis. Here’s my mother’s breath up and down. Now come I to my sister – mark the moan she makes! Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear, nor speaks a word. But see how I lay the dust with my tears.           (2.3.17-24)

So, Lance with his shoes off, re-staging the heart-rending scene of his leave-taking from his family, again, for his wholly indifferent dog. Now come I to my father (one shoe): ‘Father, your blessing’, he asked, the dutiful son, and Lance might kneel down, as he would have to make that request. But, unsurprisingly, now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. (This might be suggested in any number of inventive ways, there being no prescribed manner in which a shoe weeps.) Now should I kiss my father—and the audience can express its disgust at the thought—and Lance might recoil, realizing what he’s set up, but continuing, like the trooper he is—and so he kisses the shoe. But his father is silent, as the shoe is: well, he weeps on.

Now come I to my mother. The other shoe. (The dog remains indifferent.) O, that she could speak now, like a wold-woman! This shoe too remains silent, like Lance’s mother… A wold-woman is one of the play’s few textual cruxes: it could be wold as country-woman, or as a version of wood, to which it’s sometimes emended, meaning wode, mad. If only the shoe-mother could express herself freely, give vent to her feelings! But no. Well, I kiss her—and there must be scope for more comedy, as Lance knows (or thinks he knows) how bad this will be, but it’s worse (he might gag):why there ’tis. Here’s my mother’s breath up and down, all over. Stinky shoes! But the illusion is all, and Lance remains wholly committed to his scene.

Now come I to my sister—the staff, the walking stick. Mark the moan she makes! a bit of ventriloquism for variety, a sigh from the slender staff. Just listen to her sorrow! Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear, nor speaks a word—as has indeed been the case through Lance’s play, and whatever the dog does, will be hilarious. But see how I lay the dust with my tears: look at me, weeping like a sprinkler system (dust on paths outside or on rushes inside would be laid, damped down by sprinkling with water) at the very remembering of the pitiful scene.

Ah Crab, doing your doggy thing—whatever you do will be perfect. It’s striking how in this scene and in Midsummer Night’s Dream, it’s interactions with animals—or the problem of performing as animals—that most brilliantly occasion Shakespeare’s playing with the idea of the play. Animals are especially good to think with about theatre, it turns out.

And the dog is still himself.