“What’s he that wishes so” (Henry V) This is better known as the ‘St Crispin’s Day’ speech and is one of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare. Henry V is a history play written in around 1599 and detailing the English king’s wars with France during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). Henry V himself delivers the St Crispin’s Day speech in the play. He delivers the speech on the occasion of the Battle of Agincourt. The real battle did indeed take place on 25 October 1415, and 25 October is indeed the feast day of the Christian saint St Crispin. However, although Shakespeare’s speech is often referred to as the ‘St Crispin’s Day’ speech, Henry doesn’t actually mention St Crispin until the end; the saint he mentions at the beginning of the speech (‘This day is called the feast of Crispian’) is actually a different saint.
Henry needs to make a rousing speech to his men. They are significantly outnumbered by the enemy forces. The real, historical Battle of Agincourt bears this out: it is thought that Henry’s forces numbered around 5,000 men, while the French army numbered at least around 30,000, although some estimates are as high as 100,000 men. Henry begins his rousing speech to his troops by telling them that all men who fight in the battle that day, and survive, returning safely home afterwards, will ‘stand a-tiptoe’ (i.e. walk tall, or feel proud) whenever St Crispin’s Day is mentioned, because it will remind them of their heroism on this day. Henry goes on to tell his men that those who survive the battle and live to see old age will, every year on the ‘vigil’ (i.e. the eve) of the anniversary of the battle, celebrate with his neighbours back home and mark the occasion, showing off his battle scars.
Old men tend to be forgetful, and all of the soldiers standing before Henry will become forgetful as they grow old too; but one thing they will never forget is their feats of bravery that they perform in the battle on this day. The names of those who lead the battle – the King and the noblemen who fight with him – will remain familiar in the mouth of every man who fought alongside them, as familiar as ‘household words’ or common phrases. The reference to ‘mouth’ here suggests that the veterans of the battle will be telling their war stories to a rapt audience of neighbours in years to come: people who wish to hear of the part the men played in the heroic battle. Every good man will teach his son about the battle, so that not a single year will go by when the battle is not remembered on St Crispin’s Day. This will last forever – until the end of the world.
And it really is a case of ‘we few’, given how much Henry and the English army are outnumbered by the French enemy! When Henry says that ‘be he ne’er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition’, he means that every man, no matter how small (‘vile’ was used to refer to someone of minor social standing, e.g. a member of the ‘great unwashed’, as well as denoting someone mean or evil), will become a ‘gentleman’, or be raised up in the eyes of society, through his heroic conduct in battle. Henry doesn’t literally mean that the swineherds and peasants fighting with him will become earls or dukes when they get home: he’s speaking figuratively, of course. They will be ennobled in a general way through their noble deeds done in battle, fighting for king and country. However, as is often the case in Shakespeare, there is a potential secondary meaning: namely, that no matter what ‘vile’ deeds these fighting-men have carried out before, their ‘condition’ in the eyes of God will be improved through their heroism. It’s as if, by fighting with Henry V in this battle, they can attain absolution or forgiveness for past sins or misdemeanours.
Indeed, those current ‘gentlemen’ (Henry’s use of the word follows Henry’s use of ‘gentle’ as a verb in the previous line) who are now safe in their beds back home, and not fighting alongside their king, will think it a bad thing that they were absent from the fighting – it will be so terrible for them that it will carry the force of a curse. They will consider their masculinity, their sense of courage and heroism, a small and worthless thing whenever they hear others talk of the bravery of the men who did fight in the battle. (Once again, there’s another, slightly rude meaning to Henry’s words: ‘hold their manhoods cheap’ suggests these non-combatants will consider their ‘manhoods’, i.e. their male genitalia as a symbol of their male power, worthless because they did not prove their mettle in the heat of battle.)
The speech was worth closer analysis, not only because of the double meanings to some of the language Shakespeare uses, or because of the fact that he is actually talking about two saints rather than one. No: the speech is also noteworthy for the way Henry cleverly switches from speaking of ‘we few, we happy few’ – i.e. those noblemen who immediately surround him in the front line of battle – to including the whole army in his rousing and inspiring speech. All men who shed blood with him will become his ‘brothers’.
