In the movie Shakespeare in Love, the theatre owner Philip Henslowe outlines the formula of his new star dramatist, including “mistaken identities … a bit with a dog, and love triumphant”. As the film is set in 1593, the reference by screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard is clearly to The Two Gentlemen of Verona in which romances overcome deceit and disguise and the clown Launce has a canine companion, Crab, who is prone to steal the show. During times of tight cultural budgets, such as now, there is an old theatre joke about the RSC being forced to put...