SHAKESPEARE, William: "How! dare not! do not! Do you know, and dare not be intelligent to me?"

The great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare in “The Winter’s Tale” gets to the core of truth telling in the following exchange between Camillo, a Lord of Sicilia, who has been tasked by Leontes, King of Sicilia, to poison Polixenes, King of Bohemia who is visiting Sicilia and who a madly jealous Leontes suspects of adultery with Hermione, Queen to Leontes:

“Polixenes: The king hath on him such a countenance as he had lost some province and a region loved as he loves himself … and so leaves me to consider what is breeding that changes thus his manners.

Camillo: I dare not know, my lord.

Polixenes: How! dare not! do not! Do you know, and dare not be intelligent to me? ‘T is thereabouts; for, to yourself, what you do know you must, and cannot say you dare not”.