The St Crispin's Day speech is a part of William Shakespeare's history play Henry V, Scene iii 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 recall how the English had previously inflicted great defeats upon the French. 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 filmHenry V, and it made famous the phrase "band of brothers". The play was written around 1600, and several later writers have used parts of it in their own texts.
Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words took its name from the speech.
During the First Barbary War, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, Jr. proclaimed "the fewer men, the greater share of honor," before leading a raiding party to destroy the USS Philadelphia.
The title of British politician Duff Cooper's autobiography Old Men Forget is taken from the speech.
During the legal battle for the U.S. presidential election of 2000, regarding the Florida vote recount, members of the Florida legal team for George W. Bush, the eventual legal victor, joined arms and recited the speech during a break in preparation, to motivate themselves.
On the day of the result of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, as the vote to leave became clear, activist and MEP Daniel Hannan is reported to have delivered an edited version of the speech from a table, replacing the names Bedford, Exeter, Warwick and Talbot with other prominent Vote Leave activists.
Film, television, music and literature
Parts of the speech appear in films such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Tombstone, Renaissance Man, Tea With Mussolini, This Is England, and Their Finest. It has also been used in television series such as Rough Riders, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Black Adder and Doctor Who.
Stephen Ambrose borrowed the phrase "Band of Brothers" for the title of his 1992 book on E Company of the 101st Airborne during World War II; it was later adapted into the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers. In the closing scene of the series, Carwood Lipton quotes from Shakespeare's speech.
A part of the speech is quoted in the 2017 novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy as one of the character's mother's favourite passage from Shakespeare which is recited at her second funeral.
The 2018 video gameWe Happy Few's title comes from this speech.
In the 2019 Disney filmTogo, Leonhard Seppala adapts the speech to his situation while crossing the frozen sound.
