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."