January 12th, 2015 → 5:41 am @ Lea // No Comments

“Forsooth, a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine.”  – Othello

I’ve agreed to lead a discussion group on Othello over the next few months (how did that happen?!), so forgive me, but I have a feeling many of the upcoming posts will be Othello based.  Already on just the first page of the play I’ve underlined a number of things I wouldn’t mind blogging about.  The first is simply the word “arithmetician.”  I’ve written before how few math/numbers related quotes I’ve been able to find in the Shakespeare canon, so when I came across this word I was at first excited!  But it appears that Shakespeare means it less about arithmetic, than about describing someone with military knowledge.  Oh well.  It’s still a cool word, IMO.