Stars and dog-stars?

This is the season when Gemini the Twins gives way to Cancer the Crab in the heavens.  But it was probably a terrestrial crab the Victorian star, Ellen Terry was thinking of when she wrote in her Memoirs :
"Progress on the stage is often crablike, and little  parts, big parts, and no parts at all must be accepted as 'all in a day's work'. "

Did she also have a fleeting thought for The Two Gentleman of Verona, Shakespeare's early play about love and fidelity?  In it Launce, the comic servant is upstaged by his badly-behaved mutt, Crab the dog.

Launce teaching his Dog 18th century engraving,  Henry W. Bunbury, 

© Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco

"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 would I 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."   But worse is to come:

"He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentleman-like dogs under the duke's table: he had not been there -- bless the mark---a pissing-while, but all the chamber smelt him.  Out with the dog!

. …Nay, I'll be sworn, I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, …I have stood on the pillory for geese he hath killed,…. thou thinkest not of this now.  Nay, I remember the trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia: did not I bid thee still mark me and do as I do?  When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale?  Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?"

Two Gentlemen of Verona  Act IV, sc. 4.  

Unheavenly Twins: the Haymarket Gemini

The zodiac sign for May is Gemini, or the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux.  They are also described as 'comazants' (see Brewer's Dictionary) responsible for  St. Elmo's Fire, a natural electric phenomenon often seen at sea, and described in literature from Shakespeare's Tempest to Darwin, to Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.   

So Ariel describes creating the storm: 

"I flamed amazement: sometimes I'd divide

And burn in many places; on the topmast,

And the yards, and bore sprit, would I flame distinctly, 

Then meet, and join: … 

And the Ancient Mariner:

"About, about, in reel and rout*

The death-fires danced at night,

The water like a witch's oils

Burnt, green and blue and white." 

Some less heavenly twins appear in this Punch cartoon, of 1841, written perhaps by a fan of William Macready, the famous Victorian actor manager: It tells of "Illustrious Mac-,  Beth, or ready"  versus "small quack, Of plaudits greedy". 

"O, Gemini-Crimini! Nimini-Pimini...

Punch, August 1841, H. Beard collection ©V&A

Macready in his iconic Scottish role  

© V&A Museum

I could not find any reference to this Haymarket Theatre rival in Macready's Diary online, but his more famous rival was the American actor Edwin Forrest.  Forrest was feted when he came to London in his role as Spartacus in1834, but returning in 1845 as Macbeth, he was booed off.  He suspected Macready's influence and so a feud began.

When Macready himself was ending his tour as Macbeth at the Aston Park Opera House, New York, in May 1849, a large mob stoned the theatre and many were killed and injured in the ensuing riot.  Forrest was blamed and Macready fled back to England.  This Aston Park Riot is well documented, but  perhaps some theatre historian can tell me more about the Haymarket actor?

*  Was Coleridge unconsciously echoing Shakespeare?