Act2 scene 1 Macbeth

make honor for you.’ Banquo’s explicitly states that he does not want an active role in helping Macbeth

become king. He resolves to honour his commitment to Duncan instead. He believes true manhood means

acting honorably.

Macbeth leaves a restless Banquo and Fleance getting ready to go to bed . he wanders into an empty room

and waits for his wife to ring the bell, signaling that Duncan’s servants are in a drunken slumber: Following

the servants departure, macbeth speaks his second crucial soliloquy.Once again there is fissure between

illusion and reality. Macbeth is the victim of disparity,he cannot distinguish between both. ‘Is this a dagger

which I see before me,The handle towards my hand’,Macbeth questions Is this a dagger before me with its

handle towards my hand. Macbeth starts having hallucinations. His mind starts to spin and he sees illusions

of a dagger ‘Come let me cluten thee: I have thee not and yet i see thee still.’ Come let me hold you. Is it

possible to touch you as well as see you. ‘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?’ Macbeth says,

are you nothing more than a dagger, a figment of my fevered brain. What kind of a fatal vision are you?’ He

wonders if it is the false creation of an extremely disturbed mind.’ I see thee yet, inform as palpable. As

which now I draw.’ Macbeth says that this whimsical dagger bears resemblance to the real dagger, which he

pulls out. ‘ Thou marshall’st me the way that i was going, And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes

are made fools o’th other senses, Or else worth all the rest.’ Macbeth says the phantom dagger steers him

towards the place he was already going to, Duncan’s chamber. He is shocked to see that he was about to

use a dagger just like this one to commit the murder. He feels that his eyesight is either the only working one

or the one sense that is not working. He fears that his eyesight is being made a mockery of. ‘I see thee, still

And on thy blade dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before.’ Macbeth implys that the daggers

appearance has changed. Now is covered with ‘dudgeon gouts of blood.’ Macbeth suddenly sees that the

dagger is covered with blood splotches. His mind is so anxious that he tries to convince himself that he is

having visions of the murder he is yet to commit. He refers to the murder as ‘bloody business’. Now over

one half-world nature seems dead and wicked dreams abuse. The curtained sleep . Witch craft celebrates

Pale Hecates offerings ‘Macbeth’s lines state that it is almost midnight. Half of the world is being haunted by

evil nightmares. Witches are offering sacrifices to their goddess Hecate. ‘withered murder, alarmed by his

sentinel, the wolf ,whose howls his watch, thus with his stealthy pace , with Tarquin’s ravishing strides

towards his design moves like aghast.’ Macbeth says that an old man’s murder has been roused by the

terrible howls of his wolf. The man walks like ‘Tarquin’ to his destination,very silently. He also refers to this

fact with himself as the old man ‘thou sure and from-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 wishes to walk so faintly that even the hard earth wont know where he is headed. ‘Whiles i

threat, he lived. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.’ Macbeth realizes that the more he thinks

the more his courage cools down. When the shrilling bell rings all images of the bloody dagger are

shattered. Macbeth is in a bizarre state of mind and the sudden bell has an immense impact. Macbeth’s

response to the bell reveals a slight shift in thinking. He was first assured of the King’s salvation because of

Duncan’s many virtues but now his desire to be King remains strong and steadfast in him. ‘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 hell.’ Macbeth

done. The bell invites me. Hear it not Duncan for it is a Knell,That summons thee to heaven or hell.’ Macbeth

decides that it is time to go and commit the ‘terrible feat’. He says that the bell invites him. He says don't

hear the bell Duncan because it summons you to either heaven or hell.

In this soliloquy Macbeth is hallucinating. His guilty feelings have managed to configure fatal vision. His

conscience is not placated. He is scared yet reassured as the dagger led him to the direction of Duncan’s

chamber. Alas, his vaulting ambition and greed for power takes precedence and all his controversial

thoughts,emotions and feelings tempt him to commit the heinous deed. I became aware of the fact that

Macbeth was fighting against his conscience. He uses personification and imagines himself as murder

stealthily making its way towards its victim. Macbeth cleaves to Lady Macbeth’s plan and therefor is able to

carry out the flagrant deed.