Today is St. Crispin’s Day — not a day that I would usually celebrate, being neither Christian nor English. But I do love my Shakespeare, and one thing I really enjoy is how the same speech can be interpreted in a variety of ways by different actors. So here, in honor of the day, are four different interpretations of the well-known St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V — all interpreted differently depending on the actor, the director, and what was going on at the time the scene was filmed.
1944 with Laurence Olivier
1989 with Kenneth Branaugh
1997 with Mark Rylance (at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre)
2012 with Tom Hiddleston (only a portion of the speech)
Olivier got the words wrong towards the end and missed a whole line.