Enter Lance, [with his dog]

LANCE            When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard. One that I brought up of a puppy, one that I saved from drowning when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. I have taught him, even as one would say precisely, ‘Thus I would teach a dog’. I was sent to deliver him as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master, and I came no sooner into the dining-chamber but he steps me to her trencher and steals her capon’s leg. O, ’tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies!       (4.4.1-8)

Hooray, some relief from the endless late adolescent introspection and urgency of the main plot: an update on CRAB from Lance. But things have not been going well, and Lance is in a rueful, reflective mood. (Crab is doing whatever the heck he likes, as will become apparent.) When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard. When your own employee acts like a dog—Crab is that employee and he is, in fact, a dog—it’s a sorry matter, a very regrettable and difficult situation. Lance is feeling let down, betrayed by his mate Crab, one that I brought up of a puppy, one that I saved from drowning when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. He was a rescue! I rescued him! He could have been drowned like the rest of his litter! (Safe to assume that a sixteenth-century audience probably less sentimental about puppies than a modern one, especially in an age before spaying.) (But also, an affecting glimpse of helpless little baby Crablet. Grown-up Crab is unaffected by this nostalgia and continues doing whatever he’s doing.) I have taught him, even as one would say precisely, ‘Thus I would teach a dog’. I’ve trained him and everything; obedience classes, fetch, the lot. I’ve done it by the book.

And now: I was sent to deliver him as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master—this is appalling! Proteus has reached new depths, can he really have ordered Lance to give away Crab as a present to Silvia? (And did he really think that this was a good idea? Crab? This is MADNESS.) (Perhaps this is not the full story…) But it didn’t go well: I came no sooner in to the dining-chamber—not a good time to give an unsuspecting lady an unsuspecting dog, to be fair—but he steps me to her trencher and steals her capon’s leg. The moment we got in there, Crab was up and nicking food from right under her nose! It’s wonderfully vivid, Crab swift, single-minded, efficient, up on his tippy-toes, swiping a nice plump bit of poultry. O, ’tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies! Crab, I brought you up better than that, and now you’ve disgraced yourself and me in front of our betters. You’ve let me down, and you’ve let yourself down. (Also: chicken joke, foul/fowl, obviously.)