Magic numbers

Mathematics comes up in some rather unexpected places. Now, one generally regards William Shakespeare as a wonderful wordssmith. But what I discovered is that he's a bit of a number nerd, too. So, we all know that Shakespeare comes in pentameter, which is uh 10 syllables grow broken up into five groups of two. Short, long, short, long, short, long. But that's not always the case. Take the most famous line of Shakespeare. To be or not to be, that is the question. 11 syllables. Shakespeare is doing this very deliberately. This disruptive use of a prime number, an indivisible number, a number which isn't really often used in poetry. Is there to wake you up and show you that this is an important speech that you should listen to. It also happens in McBth. One of the most famous lines in McBTH, is this a dagger which I see before me? That's also 11 syllables, a prime number. And it's not the only prime that Shakespeare used. Whenever he's talking about magic, the number of syllables goes down to seven. So when Puck is administering the love potion in Midsummer Night's Dream, ch upon thine eyes, I throw all the power this charm. Oh, it's seven syllables. So Shakespeare uses prime numbers as a kind of code to tell you things in his plays.