The melancholy Jaques has a most important role in Shakespeare's `As You Like It'. He provides the tempi for the plot. Whenever the coterie of the exiled Duke and his followers living their less than idyllic existence in the Forest of Arden begins to fall apart, Jaques comes in from the periphery and pushes the action along. In doing so he gives us an important lesson in the value, indeed the necessity, of measuring processes. To improve you need to measure, and to understand the measurements you need to know about variation. The difficulty is knowing what to measure. Time and physical dimensions are suggested as two important candidates for measurement.