Every question may be conceived as capable of being reduced to a pure question of numbers.—Auguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive Numbers captivate our imagination because of their dual nature. They are the representation of the abstract concepts upon which a vast share of human knowledge rests. In addition, they are one of the most useful tools for the daily tasks of life ever since man's relationship with nature necessitated calculation. Regardless of pragmatic necessity, numbers have transcended mere arithmetic, hence their use as symbolic representations of spiritual, artistic, and emotional concepts. In this respect, they began to be assimilated into ceremonial rituals early in history, as they became progressively detached from the natural or the stochastic. Why we do something in synchronization on the count of three, why a boxer loses a bout after a count of ten, or why our weeks last exactly seven days, are contemporary remnants of the formulaic usage of numbers.This particular function of numerals and number words is nearly ubiquitous in all the cultures that have reached a certain stage in abstract thinking.1 What is more, there seems to be a handful of numbers that have been bestowed this symbolic function virtually in every period of history, virtually everywhere.2 Bernard Shaw was familiar with the underlying meaning of these numbers and did not hesitate to grant others a prominent place in his plays, either.There exist several sources for Shaw's acquaintance with the cultural centrality of numbers. For example, he was keenly interested in economic science. For him, “Marx was a revelation. His abstract economics, I discovered later, were wrong, but he rent the veil.”3 Furthermore, he did not consider economics a merely auxiliary science, necessary for his socioeconomic criticism, as can be seen from his role in the founding of the London School of Economics and of the Fabian Society. All this cannot conceal the fact that—at least in theory—Sidney Webb played the role of the “the man of numbers,” whereas Shaw remained “the man of letters.”4 In truth, Shaw never mastered complex equations or differential calculus. His grasp of economics and its mathematical scaffolding had an inevitable tilt toward literature and history, which prevented economics from “succumbing to rigor mortis” for him.5 This scholarly bias helped him, nevertheless, to get acquainted with numbers and their key role in a variety of canonical texts.On a more pragmatic scale, Shaw was “always scrupulous in financial affairs,”6 which allowed him to act as his own literary agent and, on occasion, editor. However, he would sport a disdainful attitude toward simple arithmetic, partially due to his alleged incapacity for calculation: “my own incapacity for numerical calculation is so marked that I reached my fourteenth year before I solved the problem of how many herrings one could buy for elevenpence in a market where a herring and a half fetched three halfpence.”7 It is thus surprising that some of his characters display brilliant argumentation based on mathematical calculation. Anastasia (in The Fascinating Foundling), for example, is in awe before the disparity between the earnings of the Lord Chancellor and his clerk, Mercer: “ANASTASIA. One-fifty into £10,000 goes about 66 times. Why does he get 66 times as much as you? Is he sixty-six times as good?” (IV, 772).8Shaw's unorthodox appeal for numbers was unquestionably influenced by his early readings of the Bible, especially the Old Testament and “the scores of ones, twos, threes, fours, sevens, and all the tens, forties, and even richer numbers in which the scriptures abound.”9 Although Shaw possessed a vast biblical scholarship—faulty as it was, at times10—it is no secret that he discarded the religious significance of Scripture to some extent. This religious flippancy stemmed, in part, from his peculiar upbringing,11 and also from his inborn critical attitude toward established institutions. The verbiage of religion, out of which numbers represent a major fraction, remained deeply embedded in his dramatic style—a natural consequence of his habit to display conventional wisdom in his canonical form prior to showing it wrong by means of (un)subtle literary distortion. By and large, Shaw's exploitation of the religious symbolism of numbers can be seen as another manifestation of “his penchant for appropriating to his own uses traditional religious phraseology, and infusing it with heterodox Shavian meaning.”12Whatever Shaw's personal attitude toward each number-related area of knowledge, his use of numbers in his literary production, particularly in the plays, is significant. In view of the prominent place numbers occupy for Shaw, it is worth making a systematic analysis of this phenomenon. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to analyze the stylistic and symbolic function of number words in Shaw's plays: their role in specific plays, in the speech of particular characters, and over his entire dramatic canon. I will discuss in the next section those stylistically prominent numbers that are related to Shaw's socioeconomic critique. The second section will be devoted to numbers whose literary function relies on some sort of religious significance.Bernard Shaw is often remembered for his insightful treatment of social and economic inequality, whether in his essays, speeches, or plays. It is not surprising, then, that in the present global economic crisis—resulting in social turmoil in many countries—readers frequently encounter his words quoted by all sorts of journalists, especially in the economic press. Notwithstanding the unequivocal fact that most of Shaw's economic sagacity comes in the form of extensive analyses and powerful quips, it remains nonetheless true that numbers aid his train of thought and resourceful expression when he deals with human economics. In particular, large round numbers are the usual arithmetic conveyor of Shaw's unorthodox ideas on economic issues,13 albeit with a variety of uses that underscore the different topics he deals with. For example, the “idle rich class” is one of the inequities Shaw is most outspoken about, because the members of that class would not “take their proper places as drones in the hive,” and because “what they consume in luxury and idleness is not capital and helps to sustain nothing but their own unprofitable lives.”14 In dramatic terms, Shaw resorts to exorbitant figures spent on childishly luxurious items to emphasize the kind of erratic behavior he describes in his economic essays.Take, for instance, Miss Mopply's jewels (in Too True to Be Good), a necklace that “must be worth about twenty thousand pounds,” and a diamond ring “worth four thousand pounds if it's worth a penny” (IV, 648); or Mrs. Hushabye's (in Heartbreak House) spending five hundred pounds in “barely four months,” a “monstrous extravagance” (I, 528) for which her own father remonstrates her. Even when someone uses common sense to prevent extravagant expenses or bets, it is no match for the spoiled young aristocrats in Arms and the Man: CATHERINE:[hastily interrupting him] Dont be foolish, Paul. An Arabian mare will cost you 50,000 levas.RAINA:[suddenly coming out of her picturesque revery] Really, mother, if you are going to take the jewellery, I dont see why you should grudge me my Arab. (III, 170) Sometimes, however, this flamboyant display of wealth through the counting of a character's assets is taken to the utmost extreme with the intention of reversing the moral and social outlook of material prosperity. This is especially the case when one social status achieved by means of hereditary nobility is confronted with another obtained from free enterprise. When Bluntschli (in Arms and the Man) proposes to become Raina's official suitor instead of Sergius, he is not taken seriously at first because “the Petkoffs and the Saranoffs are known as the richest and most important families in the country. Our position is almost historical” (III, 194). Despite this initial drawback, he decides to join the game of showing off his economic and social stature by counting among his possessions “two hundred horses,” “seventy carriages,” and “four thousand tablecloths.” But he does not stop there: BLUNTSCHLI:… I have nine thousand six hundred pairs of sheets and blankets, with two thousand four hundred eider-down quilts. I have ten thousand knives and forks, and the same quantity of dessert spoons. I have six hundred servants. I have six palatial establishments, besides two livery stables, a tea garden and a private house. I have four medals for distinguished services; I have the rank of an officer and the standing of a gentleman; and I have three native languages. Show me any man in Bulgaria that can offer as much. (III, 195) If the overwhelming numerical evidence is not enough to humble Sergius's familial pride, the final humiliation materializes in view of the opposite political models each suitor embodies. Sergius is aristocratic and reactionary, whereas Bluntschli, when asked if he was “the Emperor of Switzerland,” replies: “my rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I am a free citizen” (III, 195).Charity and almsgiving are other pragmatic aspects of microeconomics that Shaw always rejects, believing that the alleged “deserving poor” are only “people who have discovered that it is possible to live by simply impudently asking for what they want until they get it, which is the essence of beggary.”15 The third of the Farfetched Fables provides a conspicuous example of a “Tramp” who would rather “live from hand to mouth” than be given a head start of “five guineas,” on the grounds that it “would be robbing.” He prefers wearing rags because “who would give alms to a well-dressed man? It's my business to be in rags” (VI, 501). Again, most Shavian beggars and tramps are delineated with the aid of numbers in the form of sums of money. These serve the dramatic trick of presenting the audience with familiar monetary situations whose ethical implications turn out to be the exact opposite of what conventional thinking would dictate. Take Doolitle, Eliza's father, in Pygmalion as an example. We witness what seems a happy ending for a secondary plot of the play—Doolittle's financial struggles—once Ezra D. Wannafeller bequeaths him “a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League.” Higgins and Pickering agree that this should be “a safe thing” for Doolittle. However, he begs to disagree because, [w]hen I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and cant live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for it. A year ago I hadnt a relative in the world except two or three that wouldnt speak to me. Now Ive fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality. (I, 264) The fact that talking about money raises some social taboos makes it a valuable dramatic tool for creating Shaw's trademark uneasiness in the audience.16 If the moral question at stake is complicated as well, as is Mrs. Warren's profession in the homonymous play, the effect is heightened. In this particular case, the repeated use of Crofts's investment on Mrs. Warren's enterprise (“forty thousand pounds”) produces some of the finest moments of tension in the play. First, when Vivie discovers that her mother's occupation is not “wound up”; then the fact that Croft has been Mrs. Warren's “business partner” for many years, since he “put not less than £40,000 into it, from first to last.” The situation proves too much for Vive, who has to “put her hand on the sundial to support herself,” “her color quite gone” (III, 81). Later on in the play, when Vivie is on the verge of exhaustion due to social shame,17 she manages to sublimate the social taboo of prostitution by underscoring the taboo of talking about money, hence isolating the entrepreneurial dimension of her profession: VIVIE:Here: let me draft you a prospectus…. You shall see. [She writes]. “Paid up capital: not less than £40,000 standing in the name of Sir George Crofts, Baronet, the chief shareholder…. Premises at Brussels, Ostend, Vienna, and Budapest. Managing director: Mrs Warren”; and now dont let us forget her qualifications: the two words. (III, 94–95) Shaw also looks into the institution of marriage from an economic angle. In that respect, he believes that the root of most evils is the economic slavery of women. This means that “to a woman without property or marketable talent a husband is more necessary than a master to a dog,” the husband being “her only means of livelihood.”18 Numbers and sums of money enable the dramatist to emphasize the economic component of marriage. Thus, the reification of a social taboo by means of technical discourse fittingly serves the purpose of promoting Shavian ideology under the disguise of farcical humor. Thus Skyes (in Getting Married) does not hesitate to appoint himself as the sole provider and economic leader of the family once he marries Edith, hastily reminding her that “when we are married I shall be responsible for everything you say,” because her caustic public speeches may have cost him “a thousand pounds damages apiece from me for that if we'd been married at the time” (IV, 431). When the time comes, Edith hoists the rogue with his own petard and argues that “if Cecil wishes any of the children to be his exclusively, he should pay a certain sum for the risk and trouble of bringing them into the world: say a thousand pounds apiece.”The textual role of numbers in Shaw's plays is not only semantic but can also be structural. Perhaps the clearest leitmotif in The Millionairess is the “fifty thousand pounds” that Epifania's suitors must make to marry her. The phrase occurs eleven times, not to mention another three times in which the “pounds” are omitted because they have already been mentioned. One may even summarize the first part of the play by means of the sentences in which this sum appears: If within six months he had turned that hundred and fifty pounds into fifty thousand, I was his. If not, I was never to see him again.” … “Alastair came back to me after six months probation with fifty thousand pounds in his pocket instead of the penal servitude he richly deserved” … “this imbecile made fifty thousand pounds and won Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga for his bride.” … “At all events, the net result was that instead of his being fifty thousand pounds to the good I was four hundred and thirty pounds to the bad. Instead of bringing me the revenues of a prince and a hero he cost me the allowance of a worm. (VI, 210, 211, 222, 228) Among the many heads of Shaw's critical hydra, the advances of the hard sciences also get their share of disparagement. The number of scientific and technological breakthroughs that Shaw witnessed in his lifetime was beyond the factual comprehension of the scientific layman. In addition, a mystic—as Shaw at times considered himself—saw the same leap of faith in religion as in geological dynamics or in the study of atomic particles. In fact, he could not understand “why the men who believe in electrons should regard themselves as less credulous than the men who believed in angels.”19 As a consequence, Shaw mocks what he considers scientific hair-splitting because, at best, it cannot answer the key philosophical questions of life, and, at worst, it becomes pure dogma.20 It should come as no surprise that this critical attitude is sometimes derisively directed against the quintessential totem of modern science: numbers. Newton (in In Good King Charles's Golden Days) exemplifies this type of mockery particularly well: NEWTON:… [To Sally] Youre from Woolsthorp, are you? So am I. How old are you?SALLY:Twentyfour, sir.NEWTON:Twentyfour years. Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty days. Two hundred and ten thousand two hundred and forty hours. Twelve million six hundred and fourteen thousand, four hundred minutes. Seven hundred and fiftysix million eight hundred and sixtyfour thousand seconds. A long long life. (VI, 14) Newton, as Shaw notes in his preface to the play, is the incarnation of a rectilinear universe consisting of “right” (straight) lines. This is, by itself, a perfect metaphor of the sometimes dogmatic nature of scientific thought, which is also rendered useless when it turns simple things into unintelligible hocus-pocus. Sometimes a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but “the line of beauty is a curve.” This is especially true in the case of linguistic expression, as is the case with drama, since the beautiful curves of idiom and hyperbole fall flat when contrasted with pure figures: NEWTON:I mean that the number of occasions on which Mr Rowley could possibly be unfaithful to you is ten thousand two hundred and twenty plus seven for leap years. Yet you allege one hundred thousand occasions, and claim to have lived for nearly three centuries. As that is impossible, it is clear that you have been misinformed about Mistress Gwynn. (VI, 25–26) When the Duchess of Cleveland (Barbara) claims that Charles has been unfaithful to her “a hundred thousand times” with Nell Gwynn, Newton's phlegmatic response does not serve as an anticlimactic counterpoint but, on the contrary, stresses the tension in the scene. Dealing with such delicate matters in purely statistical terms irritates Barbara, who thinks she is being laughed at. In sum, it can be said that Shaw's critical attitude necessitates numbers both as one of the basic tools of his villains and as the foundation of many of the intellectual evils of humankind.Most of the symbolic numbers that Shaw employs in his plays have a religious origin. However, it is necessary to establish a clear distinction from the outset between those numbers that comply with traditionally sanctioned religious semantics and those that simply draw on traditional religious symbolism to construct Shaw's New Religion.21 In truth, both functions overlap to a great extent, but the fact that the predominant role of a particular number is either one, tells us much about Shaw's dramatic purpose.Numbers that follow a pattern of meaning in connection with traditional religious texts of the Judeo-Christian canon abound in the speech of characters with a clear religious background. It is, therefore, far more likely to find those numbers out of the mouth of priests, soothsayers, oracles, and members of the clergy in general. Such is the case of Ftatateeta, the Egyptian priestess, who curses Belzanor thus: FTATATEETA:[savagely] Touch me, dog; and the Nile will not rise on your fields for seven times seven years of famine. (III, 372) In the case of Caesar and Cleopatra, this is not an isolated usage of number seven as a marker of soothsaying or superstition in the play. In fact, seven is one of the most salient numbers in terms of its magical and spiritual symbolism.22 It should come as no surprise, given that ancient texts from the Pythagorean School include a musical scale with seven intervals and record a striking parallelism between the magic of music and the seven planets of the known universe.23 The classical civilizations also grouped many totemic items in sevens, such as the Seven Sages of Greece and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In addition, the sacred Jewish texts—and subsequently the Bible—also grant seven a special role among the multitude of numbers with a nonreferential meaning in them, whether it is the seven days of creation, the seven deadly sins, the 777 days of Lamech's life,24 or the seven angels with seven vials containing seven plagues.25 To name but a few other instances from the play, Cleopatra tries to prevent Caesar's victory with “a cake with my magic opal and seven hairs of the white cat baked in it”; Belzanor is afraid of the Romans because legend has it that “they have each man seven arms, each carrying seven spears”; and there is even a reference to the burning of the library of Alexandria when Theodotus cries, “the first of the seven wonders of the world perishes.” In this sense, number seven adds to the overall tension attached to the events of the play, and also to the “curious historical relevance that artistic nonhistory can achieve.”26As it was mentioned before, a wide array of members of the clergy are prone to using this type of numerical phrases. The Bishop in Getting Married, for example, has a peculiar numerical conception of reality, to the extent that his chronological counts are made “by sevens”: THE BISHOP:… those whom we in our blindness drove out of the Church will be driven out of the registry office; and we shall have the history of Ancient Rome repeated. We shall be joined by our solicitors for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years—or perhaps months. Deeds of partnership will replace the old vows. (IV, 437) The fact that the use of the number seven in this passage obeys metaphorical patterns is underscored by the indifferent reference to “years” or “months.” In addition, the germane discussion about the former sanctity of marriage makes the applicability of this number symbolism more than plausible, especially if one takes into consideration the ubiquity of the phrase “seven years” in the Bible.27The dramatic power of number symbolism when used by religious characters is often reinforced by the religious nature of their discourse. When Keegan (in John Bull's Other Island) poses an outrageous version of the Holy Trinity, his speech fittingly pivots around number three:28KEEGAN:In my dreams it is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshipper and the worshipper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three. It is, in short, the dream of a madman. (II, 611) Keegan is an asocial former priest whose first words in the play are uttered in conversation with a grasshopper. The early realization that Keegan is insane or, to say the least, eccentric, makes him the perfect character to introduce such subversive speeches, and much more so when the topic is religion. In this case, one of the popular mottos of the trinity doctrine serves the alleged “madman” as a pattern to substitute elements of human existence (work, play, life, religion) for the three persons of God. As a result, it is easy to draw a parallelism between this metaphorical substitution and Shaw's theological ideal, in which people should be able to say “I am God and here is God, not as yet completed, but still advancing toward completion, just in so much as I am working for the purpose of the universe, working for the good of the whole of society and the whole world, instead of merely looking after my personal ends.”29The religious nature of discourse does not necessarily stem from the occupation of the characters involved in the conversation. The philosophical background of the situation sometimes suffices to provide the appropriate setting for the exploitation of number symbolism rooted in religion. Anyone would think of “Don Juan in Hell” as the perfect realization of a suggestive setting; first, because it brings to mind all the literary and musical versions of the myth of Don Juan,30 deeply embedded in the folklore of spiritualism and the afterlife; and second, because hell is a literal and metaphorical crucible in which to forge a dialectical synthesis of the multiple religious visions that Shaw entertained, hence the differentiated personalities of the Devil, Don Juan, Ana, and the Statue. Take, for instance, Don Juan's manipulation of one of the best-known “seven-phrases” of traditional Christianity: DON JUAN:No; but there is justice in hell: heaven is far above such idle human personalities. You will be welcome in hell, Senora. Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in their name: where else but in hell should they have their reward? (III, 604) The seven deadly sins become the seven deadly virtues, a few of which are listed (“honor, duty, justice”) as the sources of “all the wickedness on earth.” The blow to conventional moralistic views is phenomenal and, although Shaw had expressed similar views in other plays,31 the phraseological kernel “seven deadly” highlights the strong foundations of the ideological institution he is challenging. It should be noted that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, studies on the seven deadly sins exhibit “a tendency to examine their subject from structural and historical perspectives in which the content of the sins is imagined to be relatively stable.”32 In the above example and some others, the fact that the action takes place in hell provides the appropriate setting for a reversal in morality and ethics, in which numbers play a major role again. In particular, one of the Devil's long speeches contains most of the symbolic, characterizing, and foreshadowing effects that numbers may have in Shaw's dramatic language (III, 619–21). To begin with, the Devil introduces one of Shaw's recurring topics: longevity and long-term human evolution. Although I will discuss this in greater detail later on, it suffices to say for now that the use of high round numbers (“hundred,” “thousand”), especially in time phrases,33 is again a trademark sign of this Shavian concern. Hence, the Devil complains about how little certain aspects of humankind have changed in “ten thousand years,” or “a thousand centuries.” This hyperbolic phraseology is strengthened by other large figures regarding the irrational expenditure of modern warfare (“hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter”). Furthermore, the notion of infinity that pervades much of this speech finds a syntactic parallel in Shaw's abuse of enumeration throughout it.However, when the Devil expresses his admiration at how rapidly human destructive abilities have developed, he again resorts to the use of symbolism-laden numbers, especially but not exclusively number seven. Hence, years and centuries become “a score of weeks,” and he recounts the tragic death of a London bricklayer with “seven children” who “left seventeen pounds club money” and whose wife “would not have spent sevenpence on her children's schooling.”Since “Don Juan in Hell” contains references to the religious symbolism of numbers and to Shaw's obsession with the Life Force and human evolution, it is only logical that he should also exploit the semantic properties of number twelve.34 Indeed, twelve is ever present in scripture,35 and it is usually associated with genealogies (e.g., the twelve tribes of Israel). That is also the case in this section of Man and Superman. After feeling that her chastity is being affronted, Ana claims to have done a huge favor to “the earth which I replenished” by having borne twelve children out of her marriage, instead of having “twelve husbands and no children,” an option that the dissolute Don Juan hints at. In the end, Don Juan comes to the conclusion that “twelve children by twelve different husbands would have replenished the earth perhaps more effectively.” There is additional substantiation that number twelve symbolizes reproductive strategies in this debate, for Don Juan insists in using it to express another point of view: “Twelve lawful children borne by one highly respectable lady to three different fathers is not impossible nor condemned by public opinion” (III, 632–33).Although, as can already be seen, symbolic numbers with a religious meaning abound in Shaw's dramatic discourse, there are two plays that encompass most of this arithmetical representation: Back to Methuselah and Saint Joan. These two plays lean heavily toward the creative kind of numerical symbolism; after all, these two plays are the canon of Shavian “Scripture” for his New Religion and the Life Force. As Richard F. Dietrich succinctly puts it, Shaw set about more explicitly than ever to create such an iconography—an imagery and a narrative that would compel belief in the Life Force's dominion over the Death Force, that would give a reason to prefer life to death, and to prefer a moral life. Immodestly no doubt, but desperately, Shaw began to write a new Bible: Back to Methuselah (1918–1920), subtitled a Metabiological Pentateuch, constituting a new Old Testament, and Saint Joan (1923) providing a new New Testament.36 In general, Back to Methuselah contains the most intricate network of symbolic numbers of any of Shaw's plays, to the extent that in the latter parts of the play numbers become so embedded in some characters' speech that we are given layer over layer of numerical symbolism. This is especially successful in accentuating the uncanny effect of the character's words, since the specific allusions are harder to grasp. Take, for example, the following words of the She-Ancient: THE HE-ANCIENT:I also came to understand such miracles. For fifty years I sat contemplating this power in myself and concentrating my will.THE SHE-ANCIENT:So did I; and for five more years I made myself into all sorts of fantastic monsters. I walked upon a dozen legs: I worked with twenty hands and a hundred fingers: I looked to the four quarters of the compass with eight eyes out of four heads. C