Oil on panel painting from the school of Hieronymus Bosch of a mountebank cheating a crowd of marks with a shell game
21 November 2022
To play fast and loose is to be inconstant, to flout the rules, to cheat. The phrase comes from a con game that is in spirit, but not mechanics, akin to three-card monte. Other names for the game are pricking the garter, the endless chain, and the strap. Here is a description of the game from a mid-nineteenth century source, Halliwell’s Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words:
FAST-AND-LOOSE. A cheating game, played with a stick and a belt or string, so arranged that a spectator would think he could make the latter fast by placing a stick through its intricate folds, whereas the operator could detach it at once. The term is often used metaphorically.
As the title of Halliwell’s book suggests, the phrase is much older than the nineteenth century. It in fact dates to the mid sixteenth century. We actually have a record of the metaphorical use of fast and loose before its use as the name of the con game, but that’s not surprising given the gaps in the works that survive from this early stage of print publishing.
We see the phrase reversed from its familiar form in David Lindsay’s poem the Tragedie of the Unqhyle Maister Reuerende Fader Dauid. Lindsay (c.1490–c.1555) was a Scottish poet and diplomat, and the poem is about David Beaton, Cardinal Archbishop of Saint Andrews (c.1494–1546). Beaton was an opponent of the Protestant Reformation and worked to create an alliance between Scotland and France in opposition to Henry VIII’s Protestant England. The poem was written between 1546–55 and published in 1558. The relevant lines read:
I wes the cause, off mekle more myschance
For uphald of, my glore and dignitie
And plesoure off, the potent king France
With England wald, I haue no vnitie
Bot quho consydder, wald the veritie
We mycht ful weil, haue leuit in peace and rast
Nyne or ten ȝeris, and than playit lowis or fast.(I was the cause of much more mischance, because for my glory and dignity and pleasure I supported the powerful king of France; I would have no unity with England. But who would consider the truth, we might very well have lived in peace and rest for nine or ten years, and then played it loose or fast.)
We get the now-familiar form fast and loose in the title of another poem. This one is by Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, and was published in 1557:
Of a new maried studient that plaied fast or lose.
A Studient at his boke so plast:
That welth he might haue wonne,
From boke to wife did flete in hast,
From wealth to wo to runne.
Now, who hath plaied a feater cast,
Since iugling first begonne?
In knitting of him self so fast,
Him selfe he hath vndonne.(Of a newly married student who played fast or loose.
A student so placed at his books that he might have won wealth, fled from book to wife in haste, ran from wealth to woe. Now, who has played a more fitting throw since juggling was invented, in knitting himself so fast, he has undone himself.)
We get a mention of the con game in George Whetstone’s 1578 play Promos and Cassandra. In this passage a hangman is speaking:
Heare are new ropes, how are my knots, I saith fyr slippery.
At fast or loose, with my Giptian, I meane to haue a cast:
Tenne to one I read his fortune by the Marymas fast,
Shakespeare would draw upon Whetstone’s play and Whetstone’s later prose version of the tale as a source for the plot of Measure for Measure. And Shakespeare would use the phrase fast and loose in three of his plays, each time using the name of the con game to describe some other deception. The first of these is in the play King John, which was probably written in the 1590s, but not published until the 1623 First Folio. In this passage the king of France is speaking:
And shall these hands so lately purg’d of blood?
So newly ioyn’d in loue? so strong in both?
Vnyoke this seysure, and this kind regreete?
Play fast and loose with faith? so iest with heauen,
Make such vnconstant children of our selues,
Shakespeare used the phrase twice in Love’s Labours Lost, whose quarto version was published in 1598. The first of these is in Act 1, Scene 2:
Ar. Take away this villaine, shut him vp.
Boy. Come, you transgressing slaue, away.
Clow. Let me not be pent vp, sir, I will fast being loose.
Boy. No, sir, that were fast and loose: thou shalt to prison.
And the second from Act 3, Scene 1:
Clo. The Boy hath sold him a bargaine, a Goose, that's flat.
Sir, your penny-worth is good, and your goose be fat.
To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose:
Let me see; a fat Lenuoy, I that's a fat goose.
And he would use it in Antony and Cleopatra, which was first performed in 1607 and published in the 1623 First Folio:
O this false Soule of Egypt! this graue Charm,
Whose eye beck'd forth my Wars, & cal'd them home;
Whose Bosome was my Crownet, my chiefe end,
Like a right Gypsie, hath at fast and loose,
Beguil’d me, to the very heart of losse.
Shakespeare’s repeated use of the phrase undoubtedly played a role in keeping the phrase alive long after the con game that inspired it had been forgotten.
Sources:
Halliwell, James Orchard. A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, vol. 1 of 2. London: John Russell Smith, 1846, 348, s.v. fast-and-loose. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey. Songes and Sonettes, London: Richard Tottel, 1557, fol. 64r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Lindsay, David. “Tragedie of the Unqhyle Maister Reuerende Fader Dauid” (before 1555). Ane Dialog Betuix Experience and ane Courteour. Paris: for Sammuel Iascuy, 1558, sig. A4v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2021, s.v. fast and loose, n. and adj.
Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. London: Isaac Iaggard and Edward Blount, 1623, 4.12, 361. First Folio, Folger copy # 68.
———. King John. In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. London: Isaac Iaggard and Edward Blount, 1623, 3.1, 10. First Folio, Folger copy # 68.
———. A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called Loues Labors Lost (Quarto 1). London: W.W. for Cutbert Burby, 1598, 1.2, sig. B3v and 3.1, sig. C4v–D1r. London, British Library, Huth MS C.34.I.14.
Whetstone, George. The Right Excellent and Famous Historye, of Promos and Cassandra. London: John Charlewood for Richard Jones, 1578, 2.5, sig. C3r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Unknown artist from the school of Hieronymus Bosch. Saint-Germain-en-Laye Civic Museum. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.