Happy Few

Esta historia contar el hombre bueno a su hijo;

Y Crispin Crispian jams ser olvidado.
Desde el da de hoy hasta el del fin del mundo,
En ella seremos nosotros recordados,
Nosotros pocos, felices de ser pocos, banda de hermanos;
Porque el que hoy su sangre conmigo derramare
Ser mi hermano; por muy vil que haya sido,
Este da ennoblecer su condicin1:
Y los nobles que en Inglaterra ahora duermen2
Se maldecirn por no haber estado aqu
Y su hombra tendrn en baja estima ante quien diga
Que con nosotros luch el da de San Crispn.

Contextualization

This speech comes just before the Battle of Agincourt when Henry is
inciting his tired army with promises of glory. Henry has forgotten
his personal misgivings from the night before, expressed in
soliloquy, and now focuses on his public function of inspiring his
men to risk their lives for him in battle. Henry learned to talk to
common men in the previous plays in the Henriad (Henry IV, Parts 1
and 2) and he now uses this skill to incite bravery. The play suggests
that it is this mother of motivational pep-talks that enables the
English to win their victory.

1
gentle his condition - raise his social status to that of a gentleman by making him a king's brother
2
now abed - the scene is set after dawn, when all peasants would have risen. Gentlemen got up much
later. This is another case of Henry implying that he is a brother, one of the people
Scansion

This sto/ry shall / the good / man teach / his son; RIP
And Cris/pin Cris/pian / shall neer / go by, RIP
From this / day to / the en/ding of / the world, medial inversion
But we / in it / shall be / remem/berd; RIP
We few, / we hap/py few, / we band / of brothers; RIP+1
For he / to-day / that sheds / his blood / with me RIP
Shall be / my bro/ther; be / he neer / so vile, RIP
This day /shall gen/tle his / condi/tion: RIP
- the last syllable requires the 16th-century pronunciation of -tion as 2 syllables
And gen/tlemen / in En/gland now / a-bed RIP
Shall think / themselves / accursed / they were / not here, substitution
And hold / their man/hoods cheap / whiles a/ny speaks RIP
That fought / with us / upon / Saint Cris/pins day. RIP

Commentary: the extract is in blank verse, the standard meter for English
Renaissance poetry. In other words the dominant meter is the iambic
pentameter and there is no end-rhyme. The extract is highly regular; eight
out of the 12 lines are perfect iambic pentameters. The last line is an
obvious example. However, Shakespeare does introduce some irregularity
to avoid monotony. Within what might be considered regular variation on
the standard line we have an extra unstressed syllable at the end of the fifth
line. Other variations that do not break the meter are the medial inversion
in the second foot of line three and the substitution between the fourth and
fifth feet in line 10 (i.e. the 4th is a pyrrhic and the fifth is a spondee).
However, the only line that is irregular to the point of disrupting the meter
is line 4. This line has only four stressed syllables. Metrically, we would
expect a pause at the end of the line before Henry launches into the full
paradoxical impact of We few, we happy few the kings celebration at
the small size of his army.

Essay

Before the Battle of Agincourt Henry inspires his men by suggesting that
they are all equals, a band of brothers. However, after he had won his
victory, the king insists repeatedly on differences in rank both in the roll
call of the dead and in his cat-and-mouse game with Williams. The
implication is that Henry is the perfect Machiavellian monarch, able to
manipulate people to do what he needs them to. With false modesty he
takes no credit for the victory, ascribing it to divine intervention but
knowing full well that history will ascribe it to his military genius.