What does Macbeth see in his soliloquy in Act 2 Scene 1 and how does he interpret this image?

Act 2 scene 1 is highly important in creating the character of Macbeth, surrounding him in madness, the supernatural and evil. Moreover the speech is highly famous, it is the climatic decision making soliloquy  and it a high point of tension within the play. Structurally it signifies the act of Duncan’s death which in turn leads to turmoil.

“Is a dagger which I see before me, the handle towards my hand? Come let me clutch thee”, the dagger has more than one symbolism within the speech it is merely a ‘tool’ of use to Macbeth but also it could be seen as the repetitive imagery of a ‘prick’ of conscience as it could be argued that Macbeth is a moral man who is corrupted. Moreover, especially in this scene, the dagger is a guide toward the murder he commits “thou marshall’st me the way that I was going and such the instrument i should use”. It is the latin to ‘reach’ therefore it dramatises intention into action, it could also convey that Macbeth is over-reaching going beyond the threshold of human limitation.

Another element to the speech is the link between madness vs supernatural possession. “Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to the feeling as to sight?”, suggesting that it could be a fateful ‘apparition’ that draws him to the murder thus conveying how the witches could have internal control over Macbeth. But also in the same line, “O art thou a dagger of the mind, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain”, Macbeth recognises the madness that have could have occurred in him this is enhanced by how the audience never see the dagger giving the argument that it is merely the degeneration of Macbeth’s mind that causes him to see the dagger. Therefore implying that although the witches do enhance the supernatural experience, it truly is Macbeth’s “o’er leaping ambition” that draws him closer to the murder. The atmosphere of anxiety is consistent throughout the scene, “heat-opressed brain” exemplifies the weight of anxiety upon Macbeths conscience, and the Jacobean age believed the seat of the conscience to be upon the heart.

An alternative interpretation is that the speech is clearly separated into two halves, the first being the fascination with the dagger and the second being a soundscape/imagery of the night, they work together to create a tense tone but also foreshadow darkness of the being.  The imagery of the night begins with the “wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep”, there is a cloying imagery of the sense of interior, literally context wise they slept in huge beds with curtains all around them moreover it could be foreshadowing the abuse in her sleep that Lady Macbeth will experience. Then there is a soundscape created “the wolf, whose howl’s his watch”, the eerie sound of the wolf coupled with the Christian imagery of a wolf representing the devil here on earth as referenced by Jesus to his followers. Comparing himself to both the wolf and “Tarquin” who was known in Greek mythology to be a notorious rapid, a clear literary allusion, in the sense that he was to rape Duncan of his life but it could also signify his desire. Sound is then removed “Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk”, it signifies the theme throughout Macbeth of concealment to all introspectively and out-ward looking too, covering his deeds not only to the eyes of man but also to the eyes of heaven and earth. There is then the stage direction for a “bell rings” the bell is a signifier that it is time for Macbeth to commit the murder.

Note: the soliloquy beginning ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me’ appears in Act II Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

‘Is this a dagger which I see before me’ is often staged, and filmed, with the dagger suspended in mid-air. But this makes the implied boundary between the real and the hallucinatory too clear-cut: as numerous critics have pointed out, the point is that Macbeth believes that the dagger is real at first, rather than knowing it to be an illusion from the outset. For this reason, perhaps we’re better off picturing a dagger resting on a nearby table, lying flat; this also makes it easier to understand how the ‘handle’ of the dagger is ‘towards’ Macbeth’s hand, as if inviting him to pick it up.

After Macbeth has ‘seen’ the dagger before him, the handle towards his hand, he then begins to doubt himself.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

In other words, if this is a ‘fatal vision’ or hallucination, it appears to be one that is assailing his sense of sight only. In other words, ‘sensible’ here means pertaining to the senses, rather than the modern meaning of the word. Macbeth is a play obsessed with touch and the tangible, with what can be grasped and touched: it is a play full of hands, a most hand-y play.

But here, we are seeing the first of many hallucinatory (or are they merely hallucinatory, or perhaps supernatural?) experiences Macbeth will have. The question is whether this dagger is a result of his ‘heat-oppressed’ (the second word should be pronounced with three syllables, for the metre of the line) or fevered brain.

I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.

Another piece of implied stage direction: the actor playing Macbeth goes to his belt (or similar) to draw a real dagger he has in his possession (the one he will use to murder Duncan shortly after this scene).

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;

More implied stage direction – the dagger seems to point in the direction of the room where Duncan lies asleep. But which dagger? Still the imagined one, presumably. Though this isn’t certain: it could be that Shakespeare is now referring to the real dagger that Macbeth has just drawn, and which audiences in the theatre can see with their own eyes. The very soliloquy seems to blur the boundaries between real and imaginary, as if we ourselves are meant to lose track of the real dagger and the imagined one.

And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,

Or else worth all the rest;

In other words, either his sight is in conflict with all his other senses (such as touch), or else his eyes are worth more than the rest of his other senses put together, and he should trust what he sees. Indeed:

I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There’s no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes.

As so often with a Shakespeare soliloquy, here we find Macbeth arguing with himself, changing his mind mid-line. The detail of the dagger intensifies: he now sees (or thinks he can see) drops of blood on the blade and ‘dudgeon’ (the handle of the dagger). But he immediately says there isn’t any blood on the dagger (whether or not a dagger is there, he seems to know the blood is imagined), and merely a result of his thoughts being so turned towards bloody deeds (i.e. the planned murder of Duncan).

Now o’er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtain’d sleep;

It’s night time, and across the whole northern hemisphere or ‘half-world’, things seem to have come to a halt. Dreams of witchcraft and evil disrupt Macbeth’s sleep: he’s up and about, but the boundary between dreaming and waking seems to have been disturbed.

witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder, Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost.

Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft in classical mythology, performs ‘offerings’ or rituals – we’re back to Macbeth’s encounter with the three Witches or Weird Sisters. The word ‘murder’ should perhaps be capitalised (it is in some editions) to make it clear that Macbeth is personifying it as Murder: Murder has been roused awake by his watchdog, the wolf, and like Tarquin – the man who raped Lucrece in a story Shakespeare had earlier written about in his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, hence ‘ravishing’ – moves towards his prey, silently and stealthily like a ghost.

Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it.

Macbeth calls upon the earth to render his steps similarly silent, so that nobody will be alerted to his plans as he enters Duncan’s chamber and murders him. It’s become clear by this point that the dagger appearing to him has made Macbeth’s mind up: he plans to go through with the deed.

The phrase ‘take the present horror from the time’ is a little more difficult to interpret: the most likely meaning is that Macbeth thinks that if he moves silently that will remove the horror from this moment, since the sound of his footsteps will fill him with fear over what he is going to do. As things stand, though, horror and this moment are perfectly ‘suited’ or matched, i.e. ‘Which now suits with it.’

Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

Although it’s ungrammatical (it was common in Shakespeare’s time to have a plural paired with a singular verb, so ‘Words … gives’), the second line means that it’s no good talking about all this: he just needs to go ahead and commit the deed itself. The deed is ‘hot’ but his words are ‘cold’, i.e. the more he talks about doing it, the weaker (or cooler) his resolve grows.

[a bell rings] I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

Macbeth now takes the sound of the bell as a sign that he should go and kill Duncan. And this is where the scene ends, a scene that had begun with that unsettling vision of a dagger that wasn’t really there. Macbeth will next murder Duncan, an act that will cause him to ‘see’ more visions, ghosts, and hallucinations later in the play. Macbeth is, of all of Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps the most attuned to the various senses: sight, sound, and touch are all vividly felt here. But the most powerful sense of all is that imaginary sense of something being there when it isn’t.

About Macbeth

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragic heroes, not least because he represents the Man Who Has It All (seemingly) and yet throws it away because of his ‘vaulting ambition’ to have Even More: to be king. A brave and effective soldier who is rewarded by the King, Duncan, for quelling a rebellion against his king, Macbeth decides to kill this same king, while Duncan is a guest under Macbeth’s own roof, just so Macbeth can seize the crown for himself.

What’s more, he embarks on this course of action largely because he is tempted to do so by the Three Witches (who prophesy that he will be King) and by a woman closer to home, his ruthlessly ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth, who taunts his courage and his manhood (as it were) when Macbeth seems reluctant to go through with the deed.

Every deed Macbeth commits after the first one is justified by Macbeth’s desire to make his position ‘safely thus’, as he puts it in his soliloquy in III.1. He justifies having Banquo murdered and attempting to kill Fleance because Banquo, too, has been given a prophecy from the Three Witches, and seeing Macbeth’s prophecy comes true, he knows his friend will do his best to ensure Fleance and his descendants end up on the throne. As Macbeth puts it in III.2, ‘Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.’

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.