Chapter XVII: Act V: SCENE 1. Page 475

FAL. Hold up your head, and _mince_.

The word is properly explained by Mr. Steevens. Thus in _Isaiah_ iii. 16, "walking and _mincing_ as they go." Wicliffe has "with their feet in curious goyng;" and Tindale, "tryppyng so nicely with their feet." _To mince_ is likewise to walk in a stately, or, as Littelton expresses it, _Junonian_ step.

SCENE 2. Page 477.

SLEN. I come to her in white, and cry _mum_, she cries, _budget_.

The word _mumbudget_, here divided, is used by Nashe in his _Have with you to Saffron Walden_, where, speaking of Gabriel Harvey, he says, "no villaine, no atheist, no murderer, but hee hath likened me too, for no other reason in the earth, but because I would not let him go beyond me, or _be won to put my finger in my mouth and crie mumbudget_ when he had baffuld mee in print throughout England." To _play mumbudget_, is rendered _demeurer court, ne sonner mot_, in Sherwood's _English and French dictionary_, 1632, folio. _Mumchance_ is silence; and a _mummery_ was a silent masquerade. _Mumbudget_ may be _silence in a budget_, a something _closed_ or stopped up, Fr. _bouché_.

SCENE 4. Page 479.

MRS. PAGE.... hard by _Herne's oak_----

The tree in Windsor forest referred to in Mr. Steevens's note, was said, on newspaper authority in 1795, to have been cut down by his majesty's order, on account of its being totally decayed.

SCENE 5. Page 490.

PIST. _Vile_ worm!

Old copy _vild_, which Mr. Malone shows to have been the _old_ pronunciation. It may be added that it is likewise the _modern_ in some of the provinces.

SCENE 5. Page 492.

[_Stage direction._] "During this song, the fairies _pinch_
Falstaff."

In the old collection of songs already cited in p. 7, there is one entitled "The fayries daunce," which bearing some resemblance to that by Shakspeare, may be entitled to the reader's notice:

"Dare you haunt our hallowed greene?
None but fayries here are seene.
Downe and sleepe,
Wake and weepe,
Pinch him black, and pinch him blew,
That seekes to steale a lover true.
When you come to heare us sing,
Or to tread our fayrie ring,
Pinch him black, and pinch him blew,
O thus our nayles shall handle you."

SCENE 5. Page 500.

PAGE. What cannot be eschew'd must be embrac'd.

This is either a proverbial saying now lost, or borrowed from one of the following, "What cannot be altered must be borne not blamed;" "What cannot be cured must be endured."

TWELFTH NIGHT.