Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth
questions her husband's manhood when he decides he does not want to go ahead with
assassinating Duncan.
She chides
him:
Art thou
afeardTo be the same in thine own act and
valorAs thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have
thatWhich thou esteem'st the ornament of life [the
crown],And live a coward in thine own
esteem,Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I
would,"Like the poor cat i'th'adage? (Act
1.7.39-44)
The adage she
refers to is: The cat would eat fish but she will not wet her feet," and urges the idle
or timid to action.
In short, Lady Macbeth accuses her
husband of cowardice. She asks if he is afraid to act to achieve what he desires to
achieve, if he's willing to give up that which he believes to be the most important
thing in life, and then live with himself as a coward later. She asks if he's willing
to be like a cat who wants to eat fish but is afraid to get its feet
wet.
Perhaps, though, concerning her actually daring
Macbeth, as you ask about, the most specific dare may come before the above lines,
leading into them. After Lady Macbeth rhetorically asks her husband if the hope he
exhibited when they previously talked about assassinating Duncan has since turned "green
and pale," she quips the following:
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...From this
time
Such I account thy love. (Act
1.7.38-39)
From now on, she
will view his love as "green and pale."
This may be a
threat even more than a dare, but I think the dare is implied. If Macbeth doesn't go
through with the assassination, he will lose her love. And she is daring him to not go
through with it.
Macbeth is certainly gullible here, but
he is also corrupt. He will later use the same strategy--the questioning of
manhood--when he bullies the murderers into murdering Banquo. Although, of course, at
least he won't threaten to withdraw his love from them.
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