MACBETH
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-oppressed brain?
Macbeth, alone in the night with the plan underway, is faced with a vision of a dagger. Macbeth's soliloquy begins with a series of questions, where he interrogates both the dagger and himself. His opening question - "Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?" - establishes his murderous intent and his realisation that such actions are wrong. He seems to question not only the dagger, but his own intentions and his ability to follow them through. That the vision of the dagger has "the handle toward my hand" suggests the dagger is being offered to him, presented ready to take, even pointing the way to the chamber. The presentation of the dagger at the exact moment he needs it shows the simplistic nature of the act by which he can become king (a simplicity Lady Macbeth also sees, as she treats the act of killing Duncan as a small one). It is easy for Macbeth to accept what he sees as an invitation and take control of the dagger. The effect of this scene depends on the director's staging choices: if the dagger is shown (such as the holographic dagger of Polanski's film version), it appears a supernatural omen, something placed in front of Macbeth to spur him to action and prevent any hesitation; if the dagger is invisible to us, Macbeth's sanity – which even he questions – is broken in this scene. In the latter version, Macbeth's words conjure the illusion of the dagger, creating an impression of its physicality (such as his confidence that he can "clutch" it) at the same time as undermining that certainty. Macbeth sees the dagger at the same time as he recognises that it isn't there; "I have thee not, and yet I see thee still" blurs the distinction between appearances and reality, so that what were clear oppositions are no longer so separate (much like the witches' "fair is foul" paradox). He questions his eyes and returns to the hand/eye separation which runs through the play, separating "feeling" and "sight", where "feeling" perhaps suggests conscience as well as touch. Though he seems enticed by the vision of the dagger, he seems to recognise its danger; it is a "fatal vision", a premonition of death (most obviously Duncan's, but also his own). There is ambiguity in "fatal", at once a reference to the idea that Macbeth's fate is handed to him and to the fatality of the tragedy which will end in hundreds of deaths. Whereas the reading of "fatal" as 'decreed by fate' allows Macbeth to believe he is a victim to a pre-ordained route determined by a greater power (of which the prophecies are part), he seems to reject the comfort the abstention of responsibility offers as he realises that the vision may be a manifestation of his guilt, a "dagger of the mind" and a symptom of his "heat-oppressed brain". The metaphor here suggests his anxiety and the sheer weight of his ambition or urge to satisfy the prophecies and his wife. It is, in many respects, a turning point in the play: Macbeth can choose to ignore his 'fate' and live as Thane of Cawdor, or take hold of his own future and kill to become king.
- Jacob