St Crispin's Day Speech

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Life of Henry the Fifth

The St. Crispin's Day speech is a famous speech from William Shakespeare's play Henry V in Act IV Scene iii 18–67.

On the morning of 25 October 1415, shortly before the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V made a brief speech to the English army under his command, emphasizing the justness of his claim to the French throne and hearkening back to the memory of previous defeats the English kings had inflicted on the French. According to Burgundian sources, he concluded the speech by telling the English longbowmen that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so they could never draw a string again.^[1]

In Shakespeare's account, King Henry begins his speech in response to Westmoreland's expressions of dismay at the English army's lack of troop strength. Henry rouses his men by expressing his confidence that they would triumph, and that the 'band of brothers' fighting that day would be able to boast each year on St. Crispin's Day of their glorious battle against the French. Shakespeare's inclusion of Westmoreland is however unhistorical as he was not present during Henry's 1415 French campaign.

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Influence on Popular Culture

The phrase "band of brothers" taken from near the end of the speech has taken on a life of its own. Admiral Horatio Nelson was famous for using the phrase in correspondence with the British Admiralty to refer to the captains under his command, such as after the Battle of the Nile and before the Battle of Trafalgar. His usage helped popularize the line to refer to a close-knit group of fighting men.

In 1789, the song Hail, Columbia was written for the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States; the chorus reads "Firm, united let us be, / Rallying round our liberty, / As a band of brothers joined, / Peace and safety we shall find." The phrase also appears in the first line of the 1861 Confederate marching song The Bonnie Blue Flag.

More recently, the line was used as a title for a 1992 book on World War II by Stephen Ambrose that was adapted into an 11-hour HBO miniseries in 2001.

During World War II, Laurence Olivier delivered the St. Crispin's Day speech during a radio program to boost British morale; his reading was so successful that Winston Churchill asked him to produce the Shakespeare play as a movie,^[2] and Olivier's adaptation appeared in 1944. Kenneth Branagh offered his own reading of the speech and the play in his 1989 adaptation as well.

Apart from being read during film and theater performances of "Henry V", the St. Crispin's Day speech was also read verbatim in the film Renaissance Man by Private Donnie Benitez in full combat gear and in the driving rain, on being mockingly challenged by his drill instructor Sgt. Cass to recite Shakespeare. It was partially recited during the theater scene in the film Tombstone and during a deleted scene in the film X-Men: The Last Stand.

In Pat Conroy's Novel, "The Great Santini", Col. Virgil Hedgepath suggests to his friend, Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meechum, that he read the St. Crispin's Day speech, telling Meechum that one of his problems and reasons for being passed over for promotion is that his life is "one long Crispin's Day speech. You never let up".^[3]

The speech is considered one of Shakespeare's greatest and most heroic speeches, and has been imitated in such other films as Braveheart, Independence Day and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. There is also a passing reference to the speech in the episode "The Gift" of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

A paraphrased version of the speech precedes the climactic cheer-off in Bring It On the Musical.

Notes and references

References

Further reading

• Barker, Juliet (2005). Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (U.S. Title: Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England.). London: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-72648-1.