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 "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare    MACBETH: Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

Exit Servant 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 marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the 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 halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; 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. 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.

A bell rings      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.

Exit

The purpose of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is to illustrate the overall idea that when overcome with ambition, one takes desperate measures in order to fulfill that ambition, no matter the cost. 

In Macbeth, Macbeth aspires to become king and is willing to do anything, including killing the present king, in order to fulfill his desire. However, this extreme measure is followed by guilt. In the passage from the play, Macbeth is unable to decide if his goal is worth the immoral act of killing. Shakespeare uses apostrophe here in an attempt to show Macbeth’s conflict within himself. He is speaking to the dagger that he is to kill the king with. He speaks to the dagger as if it will give him an answer to his conflict. Shakespeare could have written this part as Macbeth speaking to another individual; however, making it a soliloquy directed towards the weapon reinforces the idea that it is a conflict is between is ambition and the guilt that comes with his actions. 

N. Marlborough

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html 