Act 2, Scene 1, Flying Dagger
Rebecca, Charlotte, Robyn, Kyle Leigh,
and Eli
Act 2 Scene 1 Context and Summary
After discussing with Lady Macbeth, Macbeth has
decided to go through with the crime of murdering King
Duncan. As he sits by himself waiting for the bell to call
him to Duncan, he ponders one final time about his
decision to go through with the act. He imagines a
dagger floating in front of him, which introduces the
audience to his powerful imagination for the first time.
This imagination ultimately becomes responsible for
the mental torment he experiences later in the play.
The appearance of this dagger unsettles Macbeth, and
he is only snapped from his illusion by the sound of
Lady Macbeth's bell.
Part One
Is this a dagger which I see before me, Literary Devices:
The handle toward my hand? Come,
• Rhyming
let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. • Consonance
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
• Anaphora
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
• Imagery- "heat-oppressed
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
brain"- fevered, stress and
Proceeding from the heat- oppressed
brain?
pressure
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
Overall meaning:
As this which now I draw.
•
First
line
he
questions
Thou marshall’st me the way that I
whether he actually sees it
was going;
• Realizes he is imagining it
And such an instrument I was to use.
• The hallucination does not
seem to cause him to
question his plan to use a
dagger- last line
Part Two
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the
other senses,
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
halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked
dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep;
• personifies his senses; idea that
either Macbeth's sight is fooled by
other senses, or that his sight is
the only reliable sense
• dudgeon: wooden handle
• Notes that he can still see the
dagger, but then says to
himself that there is no real
dagger (use of caesura)
• Dagger is present because the
idea of murder is causing him to
see one; alliteration of bloody
business
• Half of the world is asleep and
taunted by evil nightmares
• curtain'd refers to the curtains
drawn around a four post bed,
which was standard in Elizabethan
time
Part Three
witchcraft celebrates
•
Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d
murder,
•
Alarum’d 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.
More examples of evil happenings
at night, shows Macbeth's
acknowledgement that this is bad
Hecate is the goddess of sorcery,
seems to rule over witches. She is
associated with the moon
Murder is personified
Tarquin alludes to Roman prince of
Shakespeare's poem The Rape of
Lucrece
• Devices include:
o
o
o
o
symbolism
allusion
simile and metaphor
personification
Part Four
• S
hows blatant fear of getting caught by
Man.
Hear not my steps,
• The noise of the stones amplify his fear
which way they walk, for fear
yet free Macbeth from eerily dreadful
Thy very stones prate of
silence.
my whereabout,
• Macbeth knows that, although those
And take the present
around him are unaware of his crimes,
horror from the time,
that God is witnessing his every move.
Which now suits with it.
(The stones earth a creation of God, is
directly interfering)
Whiles I threat, he lives: Words
to the heat of deeds too cold breath• Just speaking and deliberating the
action of murder is turning him off from
gives.
committing the act further, showing that
he does understand that it is a
morally
repulsive deed.
• Caesura signifies the
ultimate decision Macbeth makes.
Part Five For Whom the Bell Tolls
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.
Although conflicted, Macbeth
is resigned to his plan of action
and seems almost wearied by
his own corruption.
Contributions to Work
• First incidence of Macbeth’s hallucinations
• Indicates the guilt and mental torment he will
later feel that will eventually drive him to
madness
• Hints at the consequences that a crime may
have on the person who commits it