Memory Work from Julius Caesar
No. 1 Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears; 5=A
(Antony) I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 4=B
The evil that men do lives after them; 3=C
The good is oft interred in their bones; 2=D
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus 1=F
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here under leave of Brutus and the rest –
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men –
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral
He was my friend, faithful and just to me.
No. 2 There is a tide in the affairs of men
(Brutus) Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallow and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
No. 3 Why, Man, he doth be stride the narrow world like a
(Cassius) Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
No. 4 Cowards die many times before their deaths;
(Caesar) The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
No. 5 This was the noblest Roman of them all;
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of these.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to the world, “This was a man!”