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”.