Friday, October 25, 1415: St. Crispin’s Day. At a place in northern France that history remembers as Agincourt.

King Henry V of England had invaded France to press his claim on the French lands of Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Brittany, Flanders and Aquitaine. He stood with 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen, looking across a defile at a French army of well over 25,000 soldiers. Despite being wildly outnumbered, Henry urged his troops forward, and won a miraculous victory that proved to be a significant turning point in the Hundred Year’s War, and a lasting point of pride in English memory.

In 1600, William Shakespeare recreated the moment. He had already presented three histories of the long war with his plays Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2. But the fourth and final installment, Henry V, was the crowning achievement. Using only the power of words – Elizabethan theatres did not utilize scenery – Shakespeare took his audience on an epic march through France. And when their imaginations arrived at Agincourt, and looked with horror across the defile at the overwhelming French enemy, Shakespeare called on the memory of their heroic king to sustain them.

Up steps Henry V, and delivers perhaps the greatest motivational speech ever given in the English language.

(Now, at this point, you really should go right out pick up a copy of Henry V, hop on the sofa, and spend St. Crispin’s weekend reading the whole darn thing. But you’re busy, and we live in the age of YouTube, and anyone can skip right to the good stuff.)

Anyone can google up “Henry V St. Crispin speech” and find lots of takes on it.

Here’s a classic: it’s Sir Laurence Olivier, from 1944, not long before the invasion of Normandy: