I received this book for Christmas, and I read it almost immediately. In addition to indicating how far behind I am in my Book Notes, that also indicates the book's staying power—it remains clear in my memory even after so many months.
The book contains examples of how Shakespeare uses numbers, and that's interesting enough, but of particular interest to me was how maths was developing under Shakespeare's very eyes.
For example, here's an exploration of how the digit "cypher" (we might call it "zero") was coming into use in Europe during Shakespeare's life:
I also found a couple of charts in the book very useful. Here are the relative values of coins mentioned in Shakespeare's works:
And here's something I made a stab at (and then abandoned as being hopelessly complicated and uncertain) in my graduate student days:
I'm a Shakespeare fan, not a mathematician, but the mathematical concepts and the Shakespeare were very well presented. Whichever way your interests lie (or if, like ShakespeareGeek, they lie in both camps), this book will be fascinating and valuable to you.
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(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).
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