The origin of "the long and the short of it"

I am not after the meaning, I am wondering how this phrase originated.

Solution 1:

Shakespeare actually uses the expression four times, but as ‘the short and the long’ rather than ‘the long and the short’. It occurs twice in ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ as ‘He loves your wife. There's the short and the long’ (II.i.124) and ‘Marry, this is the short and the long of it’ (II.ii.59). In 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, it’s ‘For the short and the long is, our play is preferred’ (IV.ii.34), and in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ it’s ‘Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew’ II.ii.117-18). The OED, however, has this citation from a source around 100 years earlier: ‘Thys ys the schorte and longe’.

The OED’s earliest citation for the actual words ‘the long and the short of it’ is from a work by one William Walker in 1690.

The OED’s definition is ‘the sum total, substance, upshot’. It’s not perhaps too difficult to see how the expression comes to have this meaning, suggesting as it does that, however you look at something, whether briefly or in detail, the conclusion is the same.