Ween

ween
verb, intransitive. (archaic) To be of the opinion; to think or to suppose.

“Sara?”

Sara looked up from her script at the portly young man on the stage. “Yes, King Henry?”

“There appears to be a misspelling in the script. It says ‘w-e-e-n.’ Shouldn’t that be ‘w-e-a-n?’”

Sara sat back and regarded the actor, suppressing a sigh. She had already had reason to regret casting the role of Henry VIII to resemble the portraits of the monarch during his reign. The costume mistress harangued her about the extra fabric and trim daily. After four days of rehearsal, Sara was learning that her Henry possessed only moderate intelligence, and that these rehearsals were evidently his first exposure to Shakespeare’s work.

“No, King Henry. W-e-e-n is correct. No doubt you have noticed that the language of Shakespeare’s time includes numerous words and phrases that people don’t use anymore. ‘Ween’ is one of those.”

The young man stood staring at his script, frowning.

“Are you having trouble figuring out what he’s talking about?” she prompted. The actor nodded, looking up at her hopefully. “You are referring to the sentence ‘Ween you of better luck,
I mean, in perjur'd witness, than your Master,
Whose minister you are, whiles here He liv'd
Upon this naughty earth?’ The word ‘ween’ means to think or to imagine. The king is asking the Archbishop of Canterbury if he thinks that he is luckier than Christ was during His time as a mortal man. It’s a veiled threat you’re making, King Henry.”

That seemed to get through. The actor nodded at his script and smiled a little. Sara glanced at the actor who was playing Cranmer and gestured that the scene should continue.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.