From John Meachen
Your article on the influence of radical cosmology on Shakespeare (19 April, p 41) reminded me of “nothing” in particular.
Shakespeare introduces zero as a number in King Lear. In the first act, the Fool says to Lear, “now thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing.” Although the cutting jibe is to Lear’s loss of his identity as king, the sense of an O without a figure, as a mathematical number, must have seemed anti-intuitive at the time.
Northampton, UK
