Macbeth Act 2 scene 1

MACBETH MACBETH

(to the SERVANT) Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, (to the SERVANT) Go and tell your

mistress to strike the bell when my drink

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
is ready. Get yourself to bed.

Exit SERVANT The SERVANT exits.

Is this a dagger which I see before me, Is this a dagger I see in front of me, with

its handle pointing toward my hand? (to

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
35 the dagger) Come, let me hold you. (he

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. grabs at the air in front of him without

touching anything) I don’t have you but I

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
can still see you. Fateful apparition, isn’t

it possible to touch you as well as see

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
40 you? Or are you nothing more than a
A dagger of the mind, a false creation, dagger created by the mind, a

hallucination from my fevered brain? I

Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
can still see you, and you look as real as

I see thee yet, in form as palpable this other dagger that I’m pulling out now.

45 (he draws a dagger) You’re leading me

As this which now I draw.
toward the place I was going already,

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going, and I was planning to use a weapon just

like you. My eyesight must either be the

And such an instrument I was to use.
one sense that’s not working, or else it’s

50 Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses, the only one that’s working right. I can

still see you, and I see blood splotches

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,
on your blade and handle that weren’t

there before. (to himself) There’s no

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
dagger here. It’s the murder I’m about to
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.
55 do that’s making me think I see one. Now

half the world is asleep and being

It is the bloody business which informs
deceived by evil nightmares. Witches are

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world offering sacrifices to their goddess

Hecate. Old man murder, having been

60 Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse roused by the howls of his wolf, walks

silently to his destination, moving like

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates
Tarquin, as quiet as a ghost. (speaking

Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder, to the ground) Hard ground, don’t listen

to the direction of my steps. I don’t want

Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
you to echo back where I am and break

the terrible stillness of this moment, a

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
silence that is so appropriate for what I’m
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design about to do. While I stay here talking,

Duncan lives. The more I talk, the more

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
my courage cools.

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.