If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Shakespeare had the advantage of hindsight in constructing that speech, for surely the real Henry V could not have foreseen the result of the day's combat in that 1415 chapter of the Hundred Year's War. Henry's army was on French soil, fatigued, starved, and crippled by dysentery. They had no cavalry. The French outnumbered them at least 4-to-1, were rested and well-equipped, led by elite armored cavalry units. Henry had asked for a truce, but was forced to fight. Could the 28-year-old king have been so confident as Shakespeare supposes?If he was, he was prescient. The battle was fought in a narrow field between two dense portions of forest, preventing the French from using their numbers to encircle the smaller English force. They had to charge head-on. The field was muddy, and their horses could not be easily maneuvered, so the day turned into target practice for the English longbowmen. According to some accounts, the English lost only 13 men-at-arms that day, and about 100 foot soldiers. (Shakespeare, making a great story into a mythic one, said that only 29 Englishmen died.)
The French lost at least 7,000 men, more than the entire English force! (Shakespeare said 10,000, which is a number historians consider plausible.) Approximately 100 high-ranking French nobles were killed. Between this battle and Henry's subsequent triumphs, the French defeat was so complete that Henry V was betrothed to the daughter of the French king and declared the heir to the French throne, an honor he never lived to claim. Henry died in his mid thirties and the elderly king of France outlived him by two months. How history might have changed if Henry had lived into his fifties! As it was, Henry died with only a nine-month-old baby as his heir. England slipped into a weak regency and eventually into internal strife ("The War of the Roses"), thus losing all the momentum Henry had created on the continent. The internecine struggles in England allowed the French, roused by Joan of Arc and others, eventually to organize their resources and drive the English from their soil some 40 years after Agincourt.
Branagh delivers the speech:
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