ACT I.
Scene 2. Page 277.
K. Hen. Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake the sleeping sword of war.
Dr. Johnson would read your person, and then explain it, "take heed how you pledge your honour, &c. in support of bad advice." The archbishop might indeed pledge his opinion in this case; but person must in all events belong to the king. It was he who had the prerogative of making war; and as the impawning of a thing is generally attended with a risk of its future loss, so the king may here allude to the danger of his own person, which, from the practice at that time of sovereigns to engage in battle, might not be inconsiderable.
Scene 2. Page 281.
Cant. ... Also king Lewis the tenth.
Shakspeare having here adopted Holinshed's error in substituting Lewis the Tenth for Lewis the Ninth, Mr. Malone has faithfully discharged his editorial duty in permitting it to remain. It was sufficient to point out the mistake in a note; and therefore Mr. Ritson's genealogy, designed to vindicate the text, but manifestly erroneous, should be omitted.
Scene 2. Page 291.
Cant. They have a king, and officers of sorts.
Sorts, if the true reading, rather means portions or companies, than of different kinds, according to Mr. Steevens; and such is the sense of the word in Mr. Reed's quotation, "drummes and sortes of musicke," though adduced in support of Mr. Steevens. In that much disputed verse 13 of the 68th psalm, the Greek word cleros, very strangely introduced into the Vulgate translation, is rendered by Wicliffe sortis; and in another old translation, lottes.
Scene 2. Page 295.
K. Hen. ... or else our grave
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worship'd with a waxen epitaph.
The question is whether paper, the reading of the quarto, or waxen of the folio, should be adopted. Mr. Malone very justly remarks that the passage has been misunderstood, and, not finding any construction of waxen that agrees with the sense required, seems disposed to give the preference to paper of which epithet he has offered a very ingenious explanation. The alteration in the folio was doubtless occasioned by some dissatisfaction with the former word, and made with a view to improvement: but no satisfactory meaning can be gathered from the term waxen, as connected with the noun wax; and the passages adduced by Mr. Steevens afford a sense entirely opposite to what is required. It seems to have been forgotten that waxen is the participle to wax, to grow, to increase, to expand. Thus in Hamlet, Act I. Scene 3, we have,
"... but as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withall——"
In A Mids. N. Dream, Act II. Scene 1,
"And then the whole quire hold their lips and loffe,
And waxen in their mirth——"
In Titus Andronicus, Act III. Scene 1,
"Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave."
A waxen epitaph may be therefore a long or protracted one, such as a king would expect.
Scene 2. Page 298.
K. Hen. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler,
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chaces.
Dr. Johnson informs us that chace is a term at tennis. It is often, not always, necessary to know more of a term than that it belongs to some particular science. A chace at tennis then is that spot where a ball falls, beyond which the adversary must strike his ball to gain a point or chace. At lawn tennis it is the spot where the ball leaves off rolling. We see therefore why the king has called himself a wrangler.