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Dogs were first domesticated as hunting companions, helping humans track and receive wounded game. While the emotional bonds between dogs and humans have existed as long as these early partnerships, literature from the Renaissance period onwards depicts a particular kind of dog kept purely for their companionship: the lapdog. The lapdog is not a specific breed, but it is usually chosen to be small and docile enough to sit in a person’s arms. These dogs were often given as gifts to women by courting men. They were a particularly gendered image in 16th-18th century writing, presented as companions for women to love and pamper, sometimes depicted as a surrogate child – or even a surrogate husband.

One of the most famous dogs in English literature is Crab in William Shakespeare’s comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Two Gentlemen of Verona depicts a love triangle: two friends and noblemen, Proteus and Valentine, fight for the affections of the Duke of Milan’s daughter, Sylvia. Crab, described by his owner as ‘the sourest-natured dog that lives’, belongs to Proteus’ servant, Lance.

While Crab is no lapdog, his relationship with Lance does not seem too far from that imagined between a more pure-bred canine and its lady companion. The scenes where Lance sits and philosophises to Crab may often appear nonsensical, but they do suggest an identification between pet and owner that literature often attributed to women in the period: ‘I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog. O, the dog is me, and I am myself.’ Lance’s apparent nonsense raises questions about how we project our humanity onto animals, and in turn sometimes animalise ourselves.

The contrast between Crab and more traditional lapdogs becomes apparent when he gets mixed up in Proteus’ courting of Sylvia. A key element of courting during the English Renaissance was the gift exchange: a man would give presents to a lady in order to both win her affections and create a sense of obligation on her behalf. In Renaissance society, any physical affection between unmarried gentlemen and ladies was highly frowned upon. Gifts acted as a proxy for such forms of affection, representing a physical symbol of the man’s love and intentions. Proteus had asked Lance to bring Sylvia the lapdog, or ‘little jewel’, that he had bought her as a courting gift. But, as Lance explains, the ‘jewel’ (or, as Lance calls it, ‘squirrel’) was stolen, and so he replaced it with his own dog, Crab:

The other squirrel was stolen from me

by the hangman’s boys in the market-place, and

then I offered her mine own, who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift the greater.

The theft of lapdogs was not an unusual crime. Their fine breeding made them into a valuable asset, as suggested by Proteus calling the dog a ‘jewel’. The joke of Lance’s response is his misunderstanding of the dog’s value. Lance equates the greater size of Crab with a greater value, as you would expect to pay more for two kilograms of flour than you would for one. However, the original dog’s small size was in fact its very appeal, as it was bred to sit docile on a lady’s lap. Lance does not understand the social role that the dog is meant to play because, as a servant, he is unfamiliar with the customs of Proteus’ high society.

Shakespeare’s audience learns about the chaos caused by Crab in a monologue by Lance. As soon as Lance presents Crab to Sylvia, he ‘steals her capon’s leg’ (chicken leg), ‘thrusts himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs under the Duke’s Table’ and begins ‘a pissing while but all the chamber smelt him’ – urinating so that everyone present could smell it. Shakespeare demonstrates how Crab intrudes on upper class spaces, barrels into the world of ‘gentlemanlike dogs’. But Lance, his owner, makes a noble sacrifice in order to protect his pet from being punished for this intrusion:

“Hang him up!” says the Duke. I, having been acquainted with

the smell before, knew it was Crab, and goes me to

the fellow that whips the dogs. “Friend,” quoth I,

“You mean to whip the dog?” “Ay, marry, do I,”

quoth he. “You do him the more wrong,” quoth I.

“’Twas I did the thing you wot of.” He makes me no

more ado but whips me out of the chamber. How many masters would do this for his servant?

Seeing that the gentlemen want to ‘whip the dog’ responsible for urinating, Lance takes the fall for Crab, declaring ‘Twas I did the thing you wot of’ and enduring the punishment meant for his dog. By asking ‘How many masters would do this for his servant’, Lance highlights a lack of humanity among the upper classes, those who are ‘masters’ to servants, in Renaissance England. Ironically, a dog receives better treatment than a person. Shakespeare suggests that a servant is noble enough to take a whipping for his dog, but a nobleman would happily subject his servant to such cruel punishment.

Some may read Crab as an animal version of Lance’s character: bought into upper class spaces but unaware or uncaring about their customs or rules, whether that results in replacing a lapdog with a ‘cur’ (a mixed-breed dog) or urinating among high society. It’s notable that Lance introduces Crab while lamenting having to leave his family to follow Proteus to Milan. He expresses anger at the dog’s own lack of sorrow, as ‘did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear.’ However, despite this contrast between the emotions of Lance’s family (‘my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands’) and Crab’s nonchalant response, when Lance gives Crab away to aid Proteus’ courtship of Sylvia the dog becomes subject to the same fate as his human: forced to leave his home in order to fulfil the wishes of a gentlemen.

Similarly, Shakespeare makes parallels between Proteus and the lapdog. Describing Sylvia’s resistance to his courtship, Proteus declares:

And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,

The least whereof would quell a lover’s hope,

Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love,
The more it grows and fawneth on her still

Spaniels, a common type of lapdog in Britain, are known for their unwavering loyalty to their owners. Proteus suggests that, by persisting in his love despite Sylvia’s rejections, he becomes ‘spaniel-like’ himself. There is a suggestion here that such persistence is emasculating, even dehumanising, as Proteus’ accepting of Sylvia’s sudden quips (while a ‘quip’ means joke or insult, its rhyme with ‘whip’ suggests a parallel with the physical punishment used on dogs and servants alike) makes him more like a pet than a man.

This comparison between a male lover and a lapdog carries from Shakespeare’s late 16th century into the early 18th century. Alexander Pope’s poem ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is a satiric account of a gentleman, the Baron, stealing a lock of the lady Belinda’s hair. The poem is a mock epic, relying on the imagery and grand language of classical tales such as Homer’s Iliad in order to depict a relatively minor social event. Pope describes the moment when the Baron suddenly cuts off the lock of Belinda’s hair as the height of tragedy:

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever

From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!

Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes,

And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.

Not louder shrieks to pitying heav’n are cast,

When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last;

Or when rich China vessels fall’n from high,

In glitt’ring dust and painted fragments lie!

Pope uses comparison to emphasise Belinda’s exaggerated reaction to the loss of her lock, which is greater than the shrieks cast ‘When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last’. Not only does Pope suggest that losing a lock of hair is worse than losing a husband, but by using the word ‘or’, which indicates equivalence, he also suggests that a husband is the same as a lapdog. This could be interpreted two ways: either a lady loves her lapdog so much that it equals her love for her husband, or a lady loves her husband so little that he ranks as lowly as her love for her pet. Considering that the husbands and lapdogs fall on the low end of the comparisons that Pope is making, ranked worse than a lock of hair, the latter seems more likely.

The patriarchal ideas of the 18th century meant that women were often treated like objects, with marriage representing a form of ownership by a lady’s husband. But Pope, and Shakespeare in his comparison between Proteus and a spaniel, show how a woman’s perspective can deflate a man’s sense of superiority. A husband may believe himself to be better than his wife, but from his wife’s perspective he has no more value than her lapdog. Both authors use the figure of the lapdog in order to satirise the social structures of high society. However, for Shakespeare and Pope, the lapdog (alongside the male lover) is still the butt of the joke. The close relationship between a lady and her lapdog remains an object of ridicule. It is important to consider the female perspective when exploring the deeper significance of the relation between women and their dogs. The Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning loved her pet spaniel, Flush, so much that she wrote poems about him. A century later, modernist writer Virginia Woolf was so inspired by Barrett Browning’s poems and letters about her pet that she wrote Flush, a biography of the dog himself.

Committed to expressing Flush’s experiences while still maintaining his distinction from humans, Woolf focused her descriptions on touch and smell – a particularly canine domain – rather than the more human realm of vision: ‘But as Flush trotted up behind Miss Mitford, who was behind the butler, he was more astonished by what he smelt than by what he saw […] smells of cedarwood and sandalwood and mahogany; scents of male bodies and female bodies; of men servants and maid servants; of coats and trousers; of crinolines and mantles; of curtains of tapestry, of curtains of plush; of coal dust and fog; of wine and cigars. Each room as he passed it—dining-room, drawing-room, library, bedroom—wafted out its own contribution to the general stew; while, as he set down first one paw and then another, each was caressed and retained by the sensuality of rich pile carpets closing amorously over it.’

Like Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’, Barrett Browning’s poem ‘Flush or Faunus’ elevates its subject matter with classical imagery, comparing her spaniel to the Roman nature god Faunus (also known as Pan). But instead of creating satire, her metaphor is made in all seriousness, working to emphasise the emotional power of the lapdog:

You see this dog. It was but yesterday

I mused, forgetful of his presence here,

Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear;

When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay,

A head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way

Right sudden against my face,—two golden-clear

Large eyes astonished mine,—a drooping ear

Did flap me on either cheek, to dry the spray!

I started first, as some Arcadian

Amazed by goatly god in twilight grove:

But as my bearded vision closelier ran

My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above

Surprise and sadness; thanking the true Pan,

Who, by low creatures, leads to heights of love.

Barrett Browning demonstrates the great comfort that dogs can bring in times of sadness: ‘When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay, / A head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way’. Barrett Browning’s classical imagery emphasises the simultaneous distance and closeness between a person and their dog. There is something inaccessible, inhuman, even magical, about an animal that can make them seem like a ‘goatly god’, but at the same time it is possible to feel closer to a pet than to many humans: after the initial surprise his response to her tears, Barrett Browning ‘knew Flush’ and his ‘heights of love’.

In Flush’s biography, Woolf emphasises this simultaneous closeness and difference:

Each was surprised. Heavy curls hung down on either side of Miss Barrett’s face; large bright eyes shone out; a large mouth smiled. Heavy ears hung down on either side of Flush’s face; his eyes, too, were large and bright: his mouth was wide. There was a likeness between them. As they gazed at each other each felt: Here am I—and then each felt: But how different! […] Between them lay the widest gulf that can separate one being from another. She spoke. He was dumb. She was woman; he was dog. Thus closely united, thus immensely divided, they gazed at each other. Then with one bound Flush sprang on to the sofa and laid himself where he was to lie for ever after—on the rug at Miss Barrett’s feet.

Woolf highlights the often-paradoxical nature of the relationship between a ‘woman’ and a ‘dog’: Barrett Browning and Flush were both ‘closely united’ and ‘immensely divided’. But Flush’s easy physical gesture of affection, as he ‘laid himself where he was to lie for ever after—on the rug at Miss Barrett’s feet’, cuts through this problem of difference. The divide between woman and dog becomes irrelevant in such a simple but meaningful act of companionship.

Woolf uses the relationship between Barrett Browning and Flush to explore how a lack of similarity can encourage different, and perhaps even better, forms of closeness. In a passage clearly inspired by Barrett Browning’s ‘Flush or Faunus’, Woolf explores the limitations of language:

The fact was that they could not communicate with words, and it was a fact that led undoubtedly to much misunderstanding. Yet did it not lead also to a peculiar intimacy? “Writing,”—Miss Barrett once exclaimed after a morning’s toil, “writing, writing…” After all, she may have thought, do words say everything? Can words say anything? Do not words destroy the symbol that lies beyond the reach of words? Once at least Miss Barrett seems to have found it so. She was lying, thinking; she had forgotten Flush altogether, and her thoughts were so sad that the tears fell upon the pillow. Then suddenly a hairy head was pressed against her; large bright eyes shone in hers; and she started. Was it Flush, or was it Pan? Was she no longer an invalid in Wimpole Street, but a Greek nymph in some dim grove in Arcady? And did the bearded god himself press his lips to hers? For a moment she was transformed; she was a nymph and Flush was Pan. The sun burnt and love blazed.

Woolf relates Barrett Browning’s uncertainties as a poet – the fear that language obscures meaning, can ‘destroy the symbol that lies beyond the reach of words’ – to her ‘peculiar’, wordless ‘intimacy’ with Flush. Woolf suggests that a relationship between a human and a pet goes beyond the limitations of language: as Flush’s ‘large bright eyes shone in hers’, Barrett Browning felt that the ‘sun burnt and love blazed.’

Shakespeare highlights the absurdity of Lance’s addresses to Crab when Lance complains that his pet ‘has no more pity in him than a dog.’ The irony of Lance complaining that Crab is ‘no more’ than what he is – a dog – suggests that it is unreasonable to expect an emotional bond with, or ‘pity’ from, an animal. However, Barrett Browning and Woolf’s more nuanced depictions of Flush show that an emotional bond is very possible – it is just of a different, wordless nature than that experienced between humans. Woolf asserts that ‘Flush, as his story proves, had an even excessive appreciation of human emotions.’

While all genders can experience a close bond with another animal, the figure of the lapdog has particular significance to women because of the restrictions created by patriarchal society. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, and beyond, women were not afforded the same social or legal opportunities as men. In a marriage, the husband was understood to rule over both his wife and children. But a lapdog was entirely a lady’s own – such pets provided a relationship in which a woman could have power. Lapdogs gave solace and companionship without asking for anything in return.

Even Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who exercised her intellectual independence through her writing career, was largely confined to her room by her controlling father due to her various illnesses – at least until her elopement with the poet Robert Browning. Woolf highlights the noble sacrifice Flush makes by choosing to share in her imprisonment: ‘Flush, to whom the whole world was free, chose to forfeit all the smells of Wimpole Street in order to lie by her side.’

Lapdogs in literature therefore provide an opportunity to explore the absurdities of social customs, the differences and similarities between animals and humans, and forms of emotional expression and experience that go beyond the realm of words. While the figure of the lapdog dates back hundreds of years, its relevance has endured. The 1955 Disney film The Lady and the Tramp (and its 2019 remake) makes the same comparison between purebred (or ‘little jewel’) and mixed breed (or ‘cur’) that Shakespeare does in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and today the close relationships between dogs and humans are displayed all over social media. Looking at how the relationships between dogs and humans have developed through literature help us better understand both our pets and ourselves.

Further Reading

If you would like to read all of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, you can access it (alongside Shakespeare’s other plays) on this website. The Two Gentlemen of Verona is the only Shakespeare play with a dog, but A Winter’s Tale does contain the stage direction ‘exit pursued by a bear’.

You can read Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’, alongside other poems, here. For another Barrett Browning poem about Flush, click here.

Click here to read the whole of Woolf’s Flush. If you would find out more about the book, and the British history of dog ownership, read this and this article.