I've little to add to Andrew's excellent summing-up; except perhaps
to suggest that 'counter' here might simply have the French sense of
'contre', as in 'un contre-coup'. If 'cast' here is thought of as a
throw of some sort, whether dice or fishhooks, then the countercast
of slight becomes a counter-ruse.
If anyone on the list already subscribes to EMEDD, the Early Modern
English Dictionary Database, it may be worth looking in there - it
comprises 16 16C dictionaries. I've sent in my application but have
not yet been 'received'.
Roger Kuin
>Dear David,
>
>Casting counts is not just a game, at least not for Weever. The epigram
>you cite is a very complex set of puns on 'counter', 'cast', and 'count',
>mostly relying on an inter-related set of meanings having to do with
>accounting, debt, and prison.
>
>The jokes run roughly like this:
>
>...Whose lauish-tongu'd precisme will not spare,
>The chiefest pillars of our cleargie men,
>But to a cast of counters them compare...
>
>Where a 'pillar' is both 'a main supporter of a church, state,
>institution, or principle' (OED pillar, n. 3b.) and a 'column of
>letterpress or figures; = COLUMN n. 4 (OED pillar, n. 6); and 'a cast of
>counters' is a stack (or column) of figures in an account, or a stack of
>coins (counter--which is not a real coin, but 'a round piece of metal,
>ivory, or other material, formerly used in performing arithmetical
>operations--see OED, counter, n. 1). 'Cast' here is also 'a reckoning' or
>'accounting' (see OED, 'cast', v. VI.37-38), a kind of tabulation
>performed with, you guessed it, counters.
>
>...giuing no count with Counters nor with pen:
>Nor can I count the waies he doth abuse them,
>Though late he had beene in the Counter cast...
>
>'Count' in the second line here refers to the legal declaration of a case
>against a defendant (see OED, 'count', n1 8.), while 'Counter' in the
>third line of this bit is 'the prison attached to such a city court [i.e.
>'The office, court, or hall of justice of a mayor']; the name of certain
>prisons for debtors, etc. in London, Southwark, and some other cities and
>boroughs (see OED, 'counter', 6 and 7), and cast means literally 'put
>away'.
>
>...If that his cheefe cast had not bin to vse them,
>And craue their frendship, for his words ore past:
>And if cast counters yet he be not giuing,
>His cast of counters casts away his liuing.
>
>Here the 'cast' of the first line is 'sleight' or 'deceit' (see OED, cast,
>n. VII 23-25), in the sense that the puritan will have to call
>pragmatically upon the 'pillars' he had before abused to bail him out of
>his present difficulties. The 'cast counters' of the third line puns on
>the past-participle adjective 'cast' in two senses--'Of metal, etc.: Made
>by melting, and leaving to harden in a mould' (OED, 'cast', ppl.a. 8a),
>and 'thrown off, disused, worn out, abandoned, forsaken' (OED, 'cast',
>ppl.a. 6) or 'Cashiered, dismissed from office (obs.); discarded, cast
>off' (OED, 'cast', ppl.a. 3); and also invokes a common meaning of
>'counter' in the period, 'an imitation coin of brass or inferior metal; a
>token used to represent real coin', or 'also applied to debased coin, and
>contemptuously to money generally (see OED, 'counter', n3, 2a-b). The joke
>here is both that the puritan will have to pay his way out of his plight
>with metal coin, and that he will have to resort to false words to curry
>favor with his erstwhile opponents. If he doesn't engage in this
>hypocrisy, he will forfeit his livelihood.
>
>Does this help us with the passage from Spenser? Not exactly. On the other
>hand, throughout this epigram Weever is playing also on the sense of
>'counters' as gaming pieces 'in later times used chiefly in keeping an
>account or reckoning in games of chance, esp. cards. (These counters are
>of various shapes, according to convenience.)' (see OED, counter n.3,
>1b-c). In other words, dice. See also OED, 'cast', n. 3. Obviously precise
>protestants would be well used to inveighing against gaming and dicing,
>courtly activities associated with 'chance' (dice, as well as risk). This
>*does* help us with Calidore: of court, it seems, men Courtesy do call...
>Calidore's 'counter-cast' is a throw of the dice, and a sleight for a
>sleight, a risk taken to save appearances with a false appearance (see
>OED, 'counter-', for some of the possible resonances of this element of
>the compound). It's what you would expect from a courtier.
>
>There is also a continuing legal resonance in the words of Spenser's
>passage--'deuise', 'count', 'colour', and 'cause'--and there are further
>etymological and semantic games going on in Weever and in Spenser, but
>I've got to get my daughters dressed and off to school before they wreck
>the house!
>
>andrew
>
>
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>Andrew Zurcher
>Gonville & Caius College
>Cambridge CB2 1TA
>United Kingdom
>tel: +44 1223 335 427
>
>hast hast post hast for lyfe
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