We Happy Few
David Thompson, 06 Jan 2009
In the last article, I examined the corrupting power of Henry V’s desire to achieve victory at any cost outside the gates of Harfleur. Contrary to the many people who find Henry’s “Once more onto the breach” speech a rousing example of leading from the front, I think it is more an instance of a leader depending upon bombast, bravado and bullying to get the job done.
I also looked at Henry’s challenge to the Governor of Harfleur – and the threats of the most outrageous and horrible violence against civilians as evidence that Henry has in fact failed as a leader. Though Henry finally takes the town, he has yielded to the darkest elements inside himself in order to do so. He has also revealed, perhaps shockingly to them, exactly what kind of atrocities he finds his men capable of committing. In my model of the world, Henry’s capture of Harfleur is a hollow and empty act.
Henry continues along a downward trajectory for much of what follows in the play. His army ravaged by dysentery and unexpectedly battered by the defending forces at Harfleur, Henry proceeds not to Paris in pursuit of conquest, but toward Calais to return to England. The historical Henry, as described in Julie Barker’s outstanding book
Agincourt, was forced to march for several days along the southern bank of the Somme in search of a safe place to cross the river before he could head north. Shakespeare’s Henry must condemn one of his old friends to death for robbing a church on the march. The campaign is in tatters.
Eventually, Henry is confronted in the field of Agincourt by a French army that outnumbers his own by at least five to one. Not only are there more of them, but the French soldiers are well equipped, well fed and well rested – the opposite indeed of Henry’s battered English troops. Henry and his men are facing near-certain slaughter at the hands of the French.
The night before the battle of Agincourt, Shakespeare’s Henry goes disguised among his troops. He may well be hoping to hear that his men are bravely prepared to face the French. He likely wants to find out that his men support his cause. On the contrary, he meets a soldier who believes that Henry will ransom himself to safety after all his men are dead. The same soldier points out that Henry will have to pay the price in heaven if he has sent his men to die in an unjust war.
This is the low point for Henry. Having fashioned himself since he was a boy as a “man of the people,” his own men suspect him of ransoming . Despite his claims that the invasion of France is a noble and worthy cause, Henry’s men consider his war a personal prize.
Now here’s where the play gets really interesting. After learning what his men really think of him, Henry has a lengthy soliloquy in which he complains about the burden of authority. He starts in a mocking tone, assuming the voice of his people:
Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!
We must bear all.
(4.1.184-187)
Henry is speaking here as if he were among the throng of those who would forsake their own responsibility for themselves, heaping it instead upon their leader. In the fourth line, the voice reverts back to Henry’s own with “we must bear all.” The slow-clap rhythm of that half-line suggests Henry’s self-pitying state. Henry goes on to describe kingship as a “hard condition” and complains that a king is “subject to the breath of every fool.”
This wallowing prompts Henry to question the arbitrary nature of his office. He recognises the hollowness of the “ceremony” that follows a king. “Canst thou,” Henry asks himself, “when thou commandst the beggar’s knee, / Command the health of it?” Over the course of the speech, Henry makes it clear that the ornaments of office are merely decoration, and he suggests that he would gladly trade places with the “lackey” that the king’s watch and care must protect.
This night of reckoning and contemplation for Henry leads finally to a prayer to the “God of battles” to give his men courage for the fight ahead, and to forgive his father for having usurped the crown of England from Richard II. Henry claims that he has paid 500 hundred poor people to pray twice daily “to pardon blood,” and that he has built two chantries or chapels where priests sing mass for Richard’s soul. “More will I do,” Henry promises, but he recognises here that such action is in vain:
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.
(4.1.259-261)
This is Henry’s crucial discovery, and it provides a turning point of which he is unlikely to be wholly conscious. This is the moment when Henry recognises the futility of his action when that action is only conducted in order to gain divine forgiveness. In other words, any value that the actions might have is undermined by the selfish outcome sought.
It is from this moment, I suggest, that Henry becomes a different kind of king – a better leader, a more valiant soldier and a better man – for it is at this moment that Henry learns to let go. After this moment, Henry’s actions are no longer driven by desperate pursuit of a particular outcome. Instead, Henry remains detached from the ends he might want, and as a result, he is able to transcend adversity.
When we next see Henry, he must rouse his troops to face the French – and, effectively, encourage them to fight despite the overwhelming likelihood of defeat. Where previously, before the gates of Harfleur, Henry suggested that any man who did not follow him back into the breach was a coward or a bastard, here, Henry takes a different tack.
Something has happened to Harry in the night. At some point between his complaints that kings can never have the restful sleep of peasants and speaking to the troops before they face the French, Henry seems to have moved beyond attachment to the outcome of the battle – and in doing so, he ascends to a higher plane of leadership.
When he overhears the Earl of Westmoreland wish for “just one ten thousand of those men in England / That do no work today” (4.3.18-19), Henry encourages him, and all of his men, to look at the situation differently.
What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin,
If we are marked to die, we are enough
to do our country loss, and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will, I pray thee, wish not one man more.
(4.3.20-25)
Talk about a brilliant reframe. Henry acknowledges the reality of the situation and its gravity, but he poses an alternate reading of their predicament. What makes it great, too, is that it’s funny. Here, in the face of almost certain death, Henry chooses a bit of gallows humour to lighten the mood and insert the possibility of another outcome into the minds of his men.
While at Harfleur, Henry essentially debased his men – likening them to animals and a violent, uncontrollable horde – before the field of Agincourt, he chooses a different tack. First, he offers his men the option of leaving the battlefield:
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he that hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart, his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
(4.3.36-41)
Henry’s claim that he would not die in the company of anyone who feared his fellowship to die with him is a wonderful touch. He’s not accusing anyone who takes up his offer of passage and crowns for convoy of cowardice – instead he’s suggesting that they’re such snobs they think themselves too good to die with the King. Where, previously, Henry’s entire means of motivating his men and threatening the Governor of Harfleur rested on the idea that Henry was socially and morally superior to his followers, here, Henry sets out deliberately to equate himself with his men – and more importantly, to raise them up to his level rather than reducing himself.
Next, Henry again suggests the possibility of coming out of the battle alive. He doesn’t suggest victory – he knows that would be too far beyond the realm of credibility. But he does suggest that some of his men might survive:
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian:
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
(4.3.42-50)
Henry subtly layers image after image in the thoughts of his men. There are several presuppositions embedded in his speech, from outliving the day, to standing tall whenever they hear it named, to being secure enough as householders to feast their neighbours on the anniversary of the battle. Henry plants the mental image in each of the soldiers of themselves as hosts, gentlemen, who, after a few glasses of wine will lift their shirtsleeves to show off their scars. It’s a jovial image – of home, hearth and remembrance.
Henry is effectively adjusting the perceptual position of his men: instead of having them look out on the present moment, he moves them forward in time, and has them look back on this momentous day. At the unconscious level, Henry’s men are already putting together mental strategies to make that image a reality – from the perspective of a prosperous future. Henry takes them even further forward in time – and as he does so, he makes survival seem almost inevitable for those fortunate enough to be on the field of battle:
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words –
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester –
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day until the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered:
(4.3.51-61)
Finally, Henry returns to the theme of elevating the status of his men. No longer does he think of them as people who have to prove that they are not bastards – nor does he suggest that they are rampaging beasts that will rape and murder if not under his regal control. Instead, Henry sees his men on a par with himself, suggesting that by being there today, every man on the field is a brother to a king:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.
(4.3.62-69)
The speech marks a massive transformation for Henry. Not once does he speak of victory. Not once does he urge his men to fight for his cause or for his standard. Neither does he suggest that his army is made up of unthinking hinds. On the contrary, Henry’s detachment from the pursuit of victory opens up new possibilities and considerations for his men. By creating a reasonable and realistic image of a desirable outcome, Henry has moved his men to take action that will bring the future he’s suggested into reality.
Henry has found the difference in approach that makes the difference in his men. Just after the speech that the most insightful exchange comes – underscoring everything Henry’s said to his troops and demonstrating the successful impact of his words. After being told that the French are about to advance, Henry simply says “All things are ready if our minds be so,” to which Westmoreland – who had just moments before seemed so disheartened by the odds and who wished for more men – replies, “Perish the man whose mind is backward now.”
