Act 2 Scene 1 Soliloquy

Old English: 

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

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

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

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. 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. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder,

Alarumed 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. 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. Whiles I threat, he lives.

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

Translation: Is this a dagger I see infront of me, with the handle towards my hand? Come, let me hold it. I don't have you and yet I still see you. Are you like a ghost I can see you but I cannot touch you? Or are you like a dagger created by the mind, that I hallucinated by my fevered brain? I can still see you and you look as real as the dagger I'm pulling out now. You're leading me to the place I was planning on going to and I was going to use a weapon just like that. I'm either blind or its the only sense working right. I can still see you and I now see the blood that wasn't there before. There's no dagger here. It's the murder I'm about to commit. Half the world is sleeping and being haunted by evil nightmares. Witches are offerong sacrifices to their goddess, Hecate. Old murder, having been roused by the howls of his wolf, walks quietly to his destination, moving like Tarquin; a roman prince who sneaked into a Roman wife's bedroom in the night and rapped her. I don't want anything to echo to break the silence of what I am about to do. Whild I'm here talking, Duncan lives, the more I talk the more my courage decreases. (Bell Rings) I'm going now. The murder is as good as done. The bell is telling me to do it. Don't listen to the bell Duncan, because it summons you either to heaven or hell.



Macbeth going to kill Duncan



Macbeth hallucinating the dagger