“Is this a dagger which I see before me” is Macbeth’s speech just before he murders King Duncan, in which he sees a floating, bloody dagger pointing the way to the king’s room, and it shows a man whose imagination has already committed the crime his hand is about to commit.
Is This a Dagger: The Full Soliloquy
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?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal’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.
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 to hell.
Text based on the First Folio (1623), Macbeth, Act 2, scene 1, with modernized spelling and punctuation. Macbeth draws his own dagger at “As this which now I draw,” and a bell rings just before “I go, and it is done.”
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about “Is this a dagger” for quick reference.
What “Is This a Dagger” Means
The whole speech in plain English, before the line-by-line detail.
Alone in the dark, waiting for the signal to go and kill the king, Macbeth sees a dagger hanging in the air in front of him, its handle turned toward his hand. He reaches for it and grasps nothing, yet he can still see it. Is it real, he asks, something he could touch as well as see? Or is it only “a dagger of the mind,” an illusion produced by his feverish, overheated brain?
He draws his own dagger and compares them: the vision looks just as solid. It seems to be leading him the way he was already going, toward the very weapon he meant to use. Either his eyes are fooling him, or they are seeing more truly than his other senses. Then, as he watches, blood appears on the blade and handle. At last he dismisses it: there is no dagger. It is the bloody deed he is planning that is shaping what he sees.
His thoughts turn to the night around him. Over half the world, nature seems dead, and evil dreams trouble sleepers behind their bed curtains. Witches perform their rituals, and Murder, like a withered old man woken by his lookout, the howling wolf, creeps toward his victim like a ghost, with the stealthy steps of the rapist Tarquin.
Macbeth asks the solid earth not to hear his footsteps, in case the very stones give him away and break the dreadful silence that suits the moment. Then he stops himself: while he talks, Duncan lives, and words only cool the heat of action. A bell rings. It is his wife’s signal. “I go, and it is done.” He tells Duncan not to hear the bell, because it is a funeral bell calling him to heaven or to hell.
Is This a Dagger, Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Where the Speech Comes in Macbeth
The scenes on either side show how close the murder is.
Three witches have told Macbeth he will be king, and King Duncan has come to spend the night at Macbeth’s castle. Macbeth hesitated, but his wife mocked his courage and laid the plan: she will drug Duncan’s guards, and Macbeth will kill the king with their daggers so the guards take the blame.
Just before the speech, Macbeth meets his friend Banquo in the dark. Banquo admits he dreamed of the witches; Macbeth claims, “I think not of them.” Then Macbeth sends his servant off with an instruction: “Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, / She strike upon the bell.” The bell will mean all is prepared. Alone, he sees the dagger.
In the very next scene, the murder is done. Macbeth returns to his wife carrying the guards’ daggers, covered in blood, too horrified to take them back. For the whole story, see our full guide to Macbeth, and for the other plays, our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
Themes
The three big ideas the speech turns on.
Imagination and Reality
Macbeth cannot tell what is real. The dagger looks as solid as his own, yet his hand closes on air. He decides his eyes are either fooled or wiser than his other senses. The play never settles whether the dagger is a supernatural sign or an illusion, and that uncertainty runs through the whole of Macbeth, from the witches to Banquo’s ghost.
Guilt Before the Crime
The blood appears on the vision before any has been shed. Macbeth’s mind is already stained by what he is about to do. The same image returns after the murder, when he stares at his real, bloody hands, and at the end of the play, when Lady Macbeth scrubs at a spot of blood only she can see. Our guide to the themes of Macbeth follows guilt through the play.
Darkness and the Supernatural
The second half of the speech turns the night itself into an accomplice. Nature is dead, dreams are wicked, witches are at their rites, and Murder walks like a ghost. Macbeth places himself inside this world of darkness, and even asks the earth to keep his secret.
Form and Language
How the speech is built, and why it sounds the way it does.
A Speech of Questions
The speech opens with three questions in a row, as Macbeth tests what he is seeing. Only after the blood appears does he answer himself with a flat statement: “There’s no such thing.” The shift from questions to certainty marks the moment he stops doubting and starts moving.
Two Daggers on Stage
When Macbeth draws his own dagger at “As this which now I draw,” the audience sees one real dagger and hears about one imaginary one. It is a simple piece of stagecraft that makes the question of what is real physical.
Tarquin
Murder moves “With Tarquin’s ravishing strides.” Tarquin was the Roman prince who crept by night into the room of Lucrece and raped her, a story Shakespeare had told in his long poem The Rape of Lucrece. The comparison links Macbeth’s crime with another violation of a trusting host’s house by night. Our guide to Shakespeare’s poems summarizes it.
Rhyming Couplets at the End
Most of the speech is unrhymed blank verse, but it closes with rhymes: “lives” with “gives,” and then “knell” with “hell.” The rhymes snap the speech shut like a decision. The final couplet turns the bell into a funeral bell before the murder has happened.
A Closer Reading: A Vision That Only Points Where He Was Going
The dagger looks like a sign from outside, but it tells Macbeth nothing he did not already know, and that is the key to what it is.
Look at what the vision actually does. Its handle is turned “toward my hand,” offering itself. It leads him “the way that I was going,” and it is “such an instrument I was to use.” Every detail matches the plan he has already made with his wife. If the dagger were a supernatural warning, it would point away from Duncan’s room. Instead it confirms, step by step, a decision that was already his.
Macbeth half sees this himself: “It is the bloody business which informs / Thus to mine eyes.” The vision is his intention made visible. That is why it grows bloody as he watches, and why, a scene later, he comes back with real daggers dripping real blood and cannot bring himself to let them go. The imagined dagger and the real ones are the same thing seen before and after. His wife sees it clearly later, when she mocks his terror at Banquo’s ghost: “This is the air-drawn dagger which you said / Led you to Duncan.” Nothing led him. The dagger of the mind only drew what the mind already held.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about “Is this a dagger,” answered briefly.
Is the Dagger Real?
No. Macbeth tries to grab it and cannot, and he concludes, “There’s no such thing.” Whether it is a hallucination of his guilty mind or a supernatural vision is left open, but it is not a real dagger.
Why Does Macbeth See a Dagger?
Because he is about to commit a murder with one. He is anxious, exhausted, and full of his plan, and his mind projects it into the air. He says so himself: “It is the bloody business which informs / Thus to mine eyes.”
What Does “A Dagger of the Mind” Mean?
An imaginary dagger, one that exists only in his thoughts: “a false creation / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.”
What Is the Bell?
A signal from Lady Macbeth. Macbeth has told his servant to have her “strike upon the bell” when all is ready, and when it rings, he goes to kill Duncan. He calls it a “knell,” the bell rung for a death.
Who Is Tarquin?
A prince of ancient Rome who crept into the bedroom of a noblewoman, Lucrece, at night and raped her. Shakespeare told the story in his poem The Rape of Lucrece, and Macbeth uses Tarquin’s stealthy steps as an image for Murder approaching its victim.
Related Reading
Three pages that take “Is this a dagger” further.