We Few, We Happy Few!

Today in my Shakespeare class, we went over Henry V. This is pretty much the most manly of all Shakespeare plays that I have read so far.

I only wish that young boys were introduced to it in High School, rather than Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet. This play has youthful frivolity, French mockery, the Battle of Agincourt, and a true sense of Honor! Seriously, these themes are the types that every guy in my neighborhood wanted to emulate when we were playing in the streets.

Many people recognize the speech that King Henry gives dubbed the St. Crispin speech. You know, the one where he says "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." Its intention was to rouse the English who were outnumbered and technologically at a disadvantage. Shakespeare seems to posit the belief that it was King Harry's ability to spurn on the men of England to fight that allowed them to win the battle of Agincourt. However, in a historical perspective, it was because every Frenchman wanted a piece of the English and got tangled up in a muddy mess in the middle of the field. What would one do during the Middle Ages if you saw that happen? Shoot a storm of arrows over, and over, and over again. It never ceased to amaze me just how easily the French could have won this battle had they had the discipline that the English did.

Speaking of the Battle of Agincourt, did you know that this is where we get the lore of the beloved "middle finger" manoeuvre? In order to keep the French from using their archers ever again, the English cut their precious middle fingers off (the finger that is crucial in pulling the bowstrings). So as a sign that they still had theirs, the Brits would flick off the French as a form of bragging. Pretty cool, huh?