Borrowing from the 43rd episode of Seinfeld, entitled "The Pitch", today's post is about nothing.  In that episode, George Costanza famously conceives the idea of "a show about nothing".   In fact,  William Shakespeare preceded George by writing a play about nothing - King Lear.  The word "nothing" appears more often in King Lear than in any other of Shakespeare's plays - more than twice as many times than in Romeo and Juliet.   Some of the more memorable lines about "nothing" in King Lear, include:

Nothing can come of nothing.  Speak again. (Act I, Scene 1)

The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself.  Let's see.  Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.  (Act I, Scene 2)

Then 'tis like the breath of an unfeed lawyer- you gave me nothing for't.  Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle? (Act 1, Scene 4)

Why, no, boy.  Nothing can be made out of nothing.  (Act 1, Scene 4)

Thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides and left nothing.  (Act 1, Scene 4)

King Lear is, of course, a play about something.  It is about old age and losing everything.  Having lost everything, King Lear dies with nothing.

The California Court of Appeal has found inspiration in the nothingness of King Lear.  Th late Justice David G. Sills paraphrased the play in Gates v. Superior Court, 19 Cal. Rptr. 3d 554, 560 (2004):

As King Lear might have said, if nothing is pled, nothing shall come of it.