Show Notes
Many Shakespeare fans don’t think of themselves as “math people.” They’re theater kids, poetry lovers, bookworms, right? But in Shakespeare’s world, math and literature were deeply intertwined. In Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare’s Mathematical Life and Times, mathematician Rob Eastaway explores how mathematical thinking shaped Shakespeare’s language and imagination.
Shakespeare lived at a moment of major intellectual change, when England was newly encountering Indo-Arabic numerals, experimenting with new systems of calculation, and redefining ideas of measure and proportion. Eastaway shows how Shakespeare delighted in numbers and patterns, playing with “scores,” fractions, and symmetry in works like Othello, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter’s Tale. Even familiar references to “nothing,” time, and music take on new meaning when viewed through a mathematical lens.
In this episode, Eastaway reveals how math was woven into everyday life in Shakespeare’s time and how reading with our “math glasses” on can offer fresh insights into Shakespeare’s language.
More from Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited
Who can explain the alchemical transformation that is rehearsal? Actors begin with words on a page and emerge with a fully formed theater production. In her documentary, Acting, director Sophie Fiennes captures the magic of actors connecting with their text and characters during a workshop with the world-renowned Cheek by Jowl theater company.
Long before his iconic portrayal of Logan Roy in Succession, Brian Cox trod the boards as a Shakespearean actor.
How do you write a “complete” life of Shakespeare when very little complete information about his life exists? Four centuries after Shakespeare’s death, the legends that have grown up around him have taken on a cultural significance of their own. As Inaugural Folger Chair in Shakespeare Studies Paul Menzer puts it, “the verifiable facts of his life would fit on the back of a postcard. But the stories that we have told about them would fill a dozen phone books.”
In 1597, the first published edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet rolled off the printing press. Only a year later, the Spanish colony of Santa Fe was established. While you might not immediately think Shakespeare had much to do with the Latinx experience, Shakespeare’s career and the Spanish conquest of the Americas fit into a similar timeline.
If you were Hamlet’s lawyer, would you advise he plead not guilty by reason of insanity? Would you consider his accidental slaying of Polonius to be murder or manslaughter? These are the kinds of questions that University of Michigan Law professor Len Niehoff asks his students to consider.