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Composed around 1599, Henry V is the last play in William Shakespeare' second tetralogy, a set of history plays which contains Richard II, Henry Part 1, and Henry IV Part two. In the previous works, Shakespeare portrays Henry's days as a crazy and reckless adolescent. In Henry V, "Wild Prince Hal" has long since grown up into a competent king who's determined to invade France and lay claim to the French throne.

Though written about the early 1400s, for countless years audiences have discovered this bit of historical fiction pertinent to their own wars. When the play was first performed in 1599, the portrayal of Henry V's military campaign could have made Shakespeare's original Elizabethan audience to think about their own shaky political situation. Back in Ireland, the Earl of Tyrone had lately started a rebellion (1594-1603) and Queen Elizabeth I has lately delivered her Beloved go-to man, the Earl of Essex, to squash the uprising (which did not exactly work out as planned)

Throughout World War II, Laurence Olivier's dramatic reading of this was broadcast on the radio and, according to scholar Marjorie Garber, it soon "became a patriotic call to arms to get embattled Britain" (Shakespeare After All). In other words, Shakespeare's words helped to pump up the British to fight against Hitler, which is fairly impressive, would not you say? Two years following his radio broadcast, Olivier directed and starred in a movie adaptation which adopted the identical patriotic tone. The passage has also been quoted in countless political speeches, movies, and literary works. (It even moved the name of Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers, that was afterwards turned into a TV miniseries about WWII soldiers).

It isn't merely the St. Crispin's Day speech that audiences remember. As a complete, Shakespeare's play has given rise to endless debates about the contrasts between Henry V's military campaign and contemporary warfare. Back in 1989, Kenneth Branagh's movie adaptation of Henry V underscored the dreadful realties of war and called into question Henry's justification for invading a foreign state.

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