Quotes from Shakespeares, w.r.t. use of and being influenced by Math in his era, that ends up in poetics. THANK YOU ROB. This is something I have always wondered about, and wanted to get the research on.
What keep a week away. Seven days and nights. Eight score eight hours.
OTHELLO. Bianco sorry Cassio been away. Score = 20 hours. 160 + 8 hours in a week. Indeed. Skor from Norse, notch on stick for every 20. Used in King James Bible.
Hang Drawn and Quartered
KING JOHN. Notorious executions of his day at Tyburn, today’s Marble Arch. First hung, then bowels cut out, then beheaded as cut into quarters. Shakespeare uses it as a description for being lovesick.
Twenty hundred thousand times more joy.
ROMEO AND JULIET. Friar to Romeo, a factor of two million.
Cipher.
Word for Zero, in Shakespeare’s day. Arabic word sfr, meaning nothing or emptiness. Often referred to by WS, for multiplying by adding to end of number on one hand, and yet meaning nothing on the other.
A plague on both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat… a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!
ROMEO AND JULIET. Published 1542, The Ground of Arts by Robert Recorde. Book that introduced ciphers. Also whole chapters dedicated to the new arts of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Turn to mathematics when you can stomach it.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. His day and age, the four mathematical subjects were: Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music – which like fractions today, was considered part of math.
But time will not permit; all is uneven. And everything is left at six and seven.
RICHARD II. Originally from game of Hazard, which was a betting game using dice. Fake or loaded dice were common in his day. From Chaucer mid 1380s: “to set the world on six and seven.” To make risky choices. And now means to be in disarray.
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