Chapter LXXXII: 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_.