Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Can some one help me analyse Macbeth’s dagger soliloquy in Shakespeare's Macbeth?

In Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth is seeing things. He thinks he
sees a bloody dagger floating. This occurs only moments before his attempt to murder
Duncan as he sleeps:


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Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
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(45)
A dagger of the mind,
a false creation,



The vision
of the dagger seems real, but Macbeth is hallucinating. He only thinks he sees a dagger.
In reality, Macbeth's guilty conscience is causing him to see things that are not there.


Macbeth thinks the dagger is leading him or guiding him to
where Duncan sleeps. He is obviously having second thoughts about murdering Duncan. He
sees the bloody dagger just moments before he plans to murder Duncan. His imagination is
over worked. His sense of dread and guilt are before him as he sees the bloody dagger
floating in the air.

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