When reading English texts from, say, the 1700s, I’ll encounter phrases like, “Please to invite the captain to dinner,” which I understand to mean “Please invite the captain to dinner.”

The way I use and understand “please” (in this sense; not the sense of “to give pleasure”) is that it’s essentially meaningless, and functions only as a tag to connote courtesy. Any sentence with “please” used this way still stands as correct when “please” is removed.

But this archaic usage makes it seem like it has a more tangible function. The sentence no longer works when “please” is omitted because there’s still that “to.”

So what is the history here?