St Crispin's Day Speech

The St Crispin's Day speech is a part of William Shakespeare's history play Henry V, Act IV Scene iii(3) 18–67. On the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, which fell on Saint Crispin's Day, Henry V urges his men, who were vastly outnumbered by the French, to imagine the glory and immortality that will be theirs if they are victorious. The speech has been famously portrayed by Laurence Olivier to raise British spirits during the Second World War, and by Kenneth Branagh in the 1989 film Henry V; it made famous the phrase "band of brothers".^[1] The play was written around 1600, and several later writers have used parts of it in their own texts.

In his final general order to his troops, issued on 18 October 1783, George Washington wrote that no one "could imagine that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that men who came from the different parts of the continent ... would instantly become one patriotic band of brothers."

[2]

During the , just prior to the Battle of the Nile, Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, then Rear Admiral of the Blue, referred to his captains as his "band of brothers".^[3]

Napoleonic Wars

' magazine Household Words (1850-1851) took its name from the speech.^[4]

Charles Dickens

During the , Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr. proclaimed "the fewer men, the greater share of honor," before leading a raiding party to destroy the USS Philadelphia.^[5]

First Barbary War

During , Laurence Olivier delivered the speech during a radio programme to boost British morale and Winston Churchill found him so inspiring that he asked Olivier to produce the Shakespeare play as a film. Olivier's adaptation appeared in 1944.^[3]

World War II

The title of British politician 's autobiography Old Men Forget (1953) is taken from the speech.^[6]

Duff Cooper

According Mark Bowden's book, , chronicling the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, general William F. Garrison quoted the speech during a memorial service for the men killed in the battle.^[7]

Black Hawk Down

(2005). Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle. London: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-72648-1.

Barker, Juliet

. Folger Shakespeare Library. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2014.

"The St. Crispin's Day Speech"

Harris, James. . Complex. Retrieved 13 December 2015.

"Oral History of the President's Speech in 'Independence Day'"

The full text of The Life of Henry the Fifth at Wikisource