Recently, I started re-watching season two of The Monkees for research for a future post. This morning, I watched "I Was a 99lb. Weakling." When he's trying to convince Micky to sign up for his fitness class, Shah-Ku says, "It is truly written that the coward dies a thousand deaths; the brave man only five hundred or so." This joke also appears in The Music Man (1962). Professor Hill tells Marian Paroo, "A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man only five hundred." Apparently, both of these jokes refer to lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once" (II.ii.32-33).
