John Kemble, it is well known, maintained that the latter was the mode of pronouncing this word in Shakspeare's days. He was right, and he was wrong; for, as I shall show, both modes prevailed, at least in poetry, till the end of the seventeenth century. So it was with some other words, show and shew, for instance. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to observe that the sounds k, ch, sh, kh (guttural) are commutable. Thus the letter h is named in Italian, acca; in French, ache, in English, aitch, perhaps originally atch: our church is the Scottish kirk, &c. Accordingly, we meet in Shakspeare reckless and rechless, reeky and reechy; "As I could pike (pitch) my lance." (Coriol., Act I. Sc. 1.) Hall has (Sat. vi. 1.) "Lucan streaked (stretched) on his marble bed." So also there were like and liche, and the vulgar cham for I am (Ic eom, A.-S.)
Having now to show that both ake and ache were in use, I commence with the former:
"Like a milch-doe, whose swelling dugs do ake,
Hasting to find her fawn hid in some brake."
Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis
"By turns now half asleep, now half awake,
My wounds began to smart, my hurt to ake."
Fairfax, Godf. of Bull., viii, 26.
"Yet, ere she went, her vex'd heart, which did ake,
Somewhat to ease, thus to the king she spake."