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Counting and calculating are at the heart of Shakespeare's King Lear (1607). Repeatedly asking, "How much?" and "How many?" the seventeenth-century tragedy illustrates how human worth can be quantified. As Gloucester and Kent discuss the division of land in the play's opening scene, they speculate on whether Albany or Cornwall will receive the larger portion of Lear's realm based on the amount of fondness the monarch has shown the men (King Lear, 1.1.1-6).1 Not long after this conversation, Lear announces that he has "divided / In three our kingdom" (1.1.35-36) and then asks his daughters, "Which of you shall we say doth love us most, / That we our largest bounty may extend / Where nature doth with merit challenge?" (1.1.49-51). This question sets the play on its precipitous downhill trajectory and, like the opening dialogue, suggests that affection can be parceled out like so much land. In response to their father's inquiry, Goneril and Regan wax hyperbolic about their infinite love for him. Cordelia, on the other hand, defines the precise amount and kind of affection each party owes the other (1.1.91-92, 93-101). Unhappy with Cordelia's response, Lear recalculates her worth. Concluding that her "price is fallen" (1.1.194), the monarch divides Cordelia's promised land between her elder sisters, leaving his youngest daughter with "nothing" (243).
In the following act, Lear again quantifies his daughters' love, this time according to the number of followers each woman will allow him to retain in his retirement. Angry that Goneril limits him to fifty knights, Lear turns to Regan, whom he believes will permit him to keep all of his one hundred men. His middle daughter, however, corrects him, saying that even "fifty followers" is too many; "but five and twenty" will be permitted in her house (2.2.402, 413). Lear responds by siding once again with his eldest daughter because by promising fifty followers, he reasons, Goneril is "twice [Regan's] love" (2.2.426). But neither woman is interested in housing Lear's men. "What need you five and twenty, ten, or five . . . What need one?" (2.2.427-29), they ask rhetorically, leaving Lear, much like his youngest daughter, with nothing.
Lear's Daughters (1987), a prequel to Shakespeare's tragedy, confronts King Lear's preoccupation with numbers and the calculation of...