Note 360 — COMUS.

To cast the fashion, i.e. to prejudge the form. ‘To cast’ was common in the sense of to calculate or compute; see Shakespeare, ii. Henry IV. i. 1. 166, “You cast the event of war.” Some think, however, that the word has here its still more restricted sense as used in astrology, e.g. “to cast a nativity”; others see in it a reference to the founder’s art; and others to medical diagnosis.