SoliloquyRenaissance · 16063 min · 2 passagesGentle

Macbeth — The Dagger Soliloquy

Four hundred years old and still the fastest portrait of a mind deciding to do something terrible. Watch how carefully Macbeth explains his own hallucination to himself.

Ambition Power Madness

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The vision

Hallucination

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 , a false creation, Proceeding from the ?

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Plain English

Is this a dagger I see in front of me, with the handle turned toward my hand? Come on, let me grab it. I don't have it, and yet I still see it. Fatal vision, can you be felt as well as seen? Or are you only a dagger of the mind, a false creation coming out of an overheated brain?

The bell

Dramatic irony

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

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Plain English

Don't hear it, Duncan — that bell is the death knell calling you to heaven or to hell.

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The Globe · Shakespeare & Renaissance drama

Soliloquy, ambition, and the sound of a voice thinking. Every answer comes with the reason and the line that proves it.

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Ambition — how other works handle it →Power — how other works handle it →Madness — how other works handle it →

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Macbeth

Thane of Glamis, then king

Macbeth — The Dagger Soliloquy · William Shakespeare

Wants: To be what the prophecy promised, without having to become it.
Undone by: He cannot distinguish wanting a thing from being fated to have it.

Lady Macbeth

His wife, and the plan's author

Macbeth — The Dagger Soliloquy · William Shakespeare

Wants: For her husband to take what she believes he deserves.
Undone by: She mistakes resolve for capacity: she can plan a murder but not live beside one.

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