staff's threshing in the habit of a woman, might have been suggested by the story of the beaten and contented cuckold in Boccaccio's Decameron, day 7. ver. 7.

Sc. 5. p. 466.

SIMP. Pray you, sir, was't not the wise woman of Brentford?

Mr. Steevens cites Judges v. 29. on this occasion but the wise ladies there, were of a very different character from the old woman of Brentford, even according to the Hebrew text: see the Vulgate and Septuagint versions, where the expression is still more remote. The subject of these wise women will be resumed in a note on Twelfth night, Act iii. Sc. 4.

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.

Sc. 2. p. 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. Mum chance is silence; and a mummery was a silent masquerade. Mumbudget may be silence in a budget, a something closed or stopped up, Fr. bouché.

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.

Sc. 5. p. 490.

PIST. Vile worm!

Old copy vild, which Mr. Malone shews to have been the old pronunciation. It may be added that it is likewise the modern in some of the provinces.

Sc. 5. p. 492.

[Stage direction.] "During this song, the fairies pinch Falstaff."

In the old collection of songs already cited in p. 11, 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."

Sc. 5. p. 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.

ACT I.

Scene 1. Page 8.

DUKE. How will she love, when the rich golden shaft Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else

That live in her.

THIS golden shaft was supplied either from a description of Cupid in Sidney's Arcadia, book ii. or from Ovid's Metamorphoses translated by Golding, 4to, fo. 8, where, speaking of Cupid's arrows, he says,

"That causeth love is all of golde with point full sharp and bright.

That chaseth love, is blunt, whose steele with leaden head is dight."

Milton seems to have forgotten that Love had only one shaft of gold. See Parad. lost, iv. 1. 763.

CAP.

Sc. 2. p. 11.

she hath abjur'd the company

And sight of men.

This necessary and justifiable change in the ordo verborum from the reading in the old copy,