"The sands are numbered, that make up my life."
Wouldn't life be wonderful if we were 10 pounds lighter or a thousand pounds richer? Whether you're trying to lose the pounds or gain them, having a specific number to aim for isn't necessarily going to make you happier. I've always had a tendency to overweightness, and I can't tell you how many times I've celebrated reaching my goal weight by stuffing my face with cake and beer.
Numbers can give us a sense of achievement but they can also make us miserable.
It's time to take a look at those digits on the page, give them a beady stare and remind them of their place, and that they are not the holy grail, merely a bunch of squiggles.
Everybody was getting very excited by numbers around the time of Shakespeare, especially as people switched over from using Roman numerals to the Hindu-Arabic symbols we've been using ever since. Imagine being able to write 1883 in numbers and not, as it would have been around the time Shakespeare was born, MDCCCLXXXIII.
But there's a danger of those numbers taking on extra meaning. Big isn't necessarily good, sometimes less is more, and on other occasions we can give numbers a significance beyond their simple squiggle meaning.
I'd like to think that by the end of this episode you will have added up all the pros and cons, multiplied by three, taken away the number you first thought of and realised that there's a heck of a lot more to life than numbers.
Plays mentioned this week include Henry 20% (just kidding, it's really called Henry the fifth), Richards II and III, King Lear and The Tempest.
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