Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Fast and loose

The phrase to play fast and loose has a certain verbal momentum or swing to it that matches its Merriam-Webster definitions: Fast and loose—1. in a reckless or irresponsible manner 2. in a craftily deceitful way

All well and good, but where does this bit of slang come from? And how old is it? I'll let you ponder for a moment, then tell you...
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Pondering time is up!

According to a nifty little book I have on my shelves, Heavens to Betsy! and Other Curious Sayings by Charles Earle Funk, fast and loose is the name of an old cheating game, dating to the 16th century.
 
Phrase Finder adds some details about to play fast and loose:

This derives from an old deception or cheating game in which something that appears stuck (fast) easily becomes loose. It is nicely defined in James Halliwell's A dictionary of archaic and provincial words, obsolete phrases, proverbs and ancient customs, from the fourteenth century, 1847:

"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." 

Heavens to Betsy adds that the game must have been known long before the 19th century, given that its metaphorical use—to say one thing and do another; to be slippery as an eel; to have loose morals—appears in Tottel's Miscellany, 1557: "Of a new maried studient that plaied fast or loose." (i.e., was unfaithful).

Added to that is this quote from Shakespeare's King John (1595):

Heaven knows, they were besmear'd and over-stain'd
With slaughter's pencil, where revenge did paint
The fearful difference of incensed kings:
And shall these hands, so lately purged of blood,
So newly join'd in love, so strong in both,
Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet?
Play fast and loose with faith?...

Fast and Loose is also the title of a 1939 thriller movie in which two rare-book sellers try to solve a murder that hinges on a missing scrap of a William Shakespeare manuscript.

Sounds like a possibility for movie night at home!

If you can find this movie online, you, too, could play fast and loose!
By MGM - source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38286457