Close Reading Assignment 4

In Macbeth’s second soliloquy he is hallucinating. Shakespeare uses this as a tool to further depict the detrimental physiological effect that the Weird Sisters and their prophecy have had on Macbeth.  The references to sight and touch characterize his thoughts as visions rather than reality. When Macbeth says “I have thee not, and yet I see thee still, art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art though but a dagger of the mind” (2.1.46-50), Shakespeare helps the reader to understand that Macbeth is hallucinating about the murder and how his conscience is having such a difficult time with the witches fateful prediction.  He speaks directly to the ‘fatal vision’ and questions why it cannot be felt. This inability is see his reality is altering his perception of morally correct thing to do.   Another reference to sight and touch is made in the lines,  “Mine eyes are made the fools o th’ other senses or else worth all the rest, I see the still, and, on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood” (2.1.56-58).  Macbeth’s ‘fool’ eyes see blood on the blade of the dagger that doesn’t exist.  He realizes that his eyes are deceiving him as a direct result of his doubts and fears.  Macbeth is losing control and he seems to realize it.  In the line, “Now o’re the one-half world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep” ( 2.1.61-63), he suggests that his life has become meaningless and sleep impossible, filled with bad dreams.  The use of ‘curtained sleep’ could have a double meaning; the curtained 4-poster bed from Elizabethan times and also Shakespeare could possibly have used the word curtained to refer to covering up the truth, supressing Macbeth’s thoughts about the hideous deed that he is planning.  The nightmares wake him up from the lie he is trying to sell himself.  Macbeth is falling apart.