Three is a Magic Number

Love's Labour's Lost Act III

There is not only word play in this act (and play) but number play as well. Shakespeare is juggling with the number three. First mention of it is Moth to Armado.

ARMADO: By heart and in heart, boy.
MOTH: And out of heart, master; all those three I will prove.
ARMADO: What wilt thou prove?
MOTH: A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the instant. By heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her.
ARMADO: I am all these three.
MOTH: And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.

I think Moth is right to round the number up to three, since it works so nicely. And, looking up 'three' in a Shakespeare glossary I found this definition:

"few, hardly any, a handful"

And then Moth's last sentence made more sense.
Costard comes into the play next, being the third character we see. And it inspires a l'envoy by Armado and Moth:

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,
Were still at odds, being but three.
Until the goose came out of door,
And stay'd the odds by adding four.

I think that this is saying a lot about the play in general. There are three lords that attend the King and there just happen to be three ladies that attend the Princess as well! They match! How cute! I am, of course, saying that the King and Princess are the 'goose' in this case. Perhaps this is explaining a situation in the play? Or is it more likely predicting something that's going to happen?
Costard is promised remuneration for delivering a letter for Armado. He describes this as three farthings, which, when applied by our definition, is only a handful. And this makes sense because he is called a slave and isn't as high in ranking.
After this our fourth character of the act comes in, Berowne (another 'goose'). He is also in love, like Armado, and chooses to express it through the number three.

"...What! I love, I sue, I seek a wife-...
And, among the three, to love the worst of all..."

I think, throughout his whole little speech here, he's saying that love is the hardest thing of three things to do. You can't control it and, therefore, you can't force it. Berowne is of the first category, I think.

And back to how three ties into the whole play we shall discuss the title: Love's Labour's Lost...or LLL. Three L's. How interesting. Out of my curiosity I counted that the letter L is the twelfth letter in our alphabet. Twelve is divisible by three and when you do that you get four. It works perfectly into the play! And L in Morse Code is four total marks, three of them being dots.
And, continuing on, the most number of scenes in an act is three (and that happens to be in act four). This number stuff is amazing! I wonder how much of this was planned by Shakespeare?