Cannons in the Canon 3: Neville, Shakespeare, and Hamlet

In Hamlet, Marcellus on the battlements describes preparations for war, and describes either the “daily cost of brazen cannon” (First Quarto) or the “daily cast of brazen cannon” (First Folio):

Why this same strict and most observant watch

So nightly toils the subject of the land,

And why such daily (cast/cost) of brazen cannon

And foreign mart for implements of war;

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week.

What might be toward, that this sweaty haste

Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?  (Hamlet 1.1)

In a 19 November 1599 letter to Robert Cecil, Neville describes a very similar situation:

This King, whatsoever his Meaning is, hath been very careful of late to furnish himself of Ordinance [cannons], and hath taken order for the casting of 50 or 60 Pieces here in the Arsenal, whereof 30 are already cast and tried; he hath also appointed great Store of Arms to be bought in sundry Towns as I am informed, wherein he may happily have a double end, to furnish himself for all Occasions, and to disfurnish the Towns. (WW, 1.130)

In other words, in preparation for war, the king is producing ordnance (cannons). He has put in orders for 50 or 60 pieces and 30 are already completed and tested. In addition, he is purchasing arms in towns. This both increases his store of weapons while depleting the stores in the towns. These are two separate preparations for war.

A search of EEBO shows that the use of “cast” to mean “manufacture artillery” was not very common at the time. So this passage does double duty to resolve the controversy. It provides another contemporaneous example of “cast” in this sense. It also provides further insight into why, in preparing for war, you might both manufacture cannons and also purchase them elsewhere. All of this evidence argues for a “cast” reading instead of “cost”.

It is worth noting that Neville owned an ironworks used for making artillery, so it’s not surprising he is interested in ordinance manufacture and dwells on it in this letter. It’s also worth noting that Shakespeare uses artillery imagery in figurative and literal senses extensively throughout Hamlet and other plays.