MACBETH      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.                (2.1.40-49)

Because this speech is so familiar, it can be easy to overlook the intimacy of Macbeth’s address to the dagger: he speaks to it directly, familiarly: I see thee yet. It’s not an it, it’s not even a you, it’s a thou. And it’s still there, apparently not just a fleeting, flickering vision. I see thee yet. The dagger looks every bit as palpable, as tangible, as able to be touched and held (even though he’s tried and knows it can’t be) as this which now I draw. He draws his own dagger. (McKellen plays this like he’s pulling a knife on the camera, or on himself, and the rest of the speech is eerily lit by the gleam of the blade.) The dagger’s pointing the way he is meant to be going, marshalling him, guiding him, urging him on like some terrible signpost, as well as reminding him that such an instrument I was to use. A dagger, honed to a killing point, like the one in his hand. Everything points to murder… Mine eyes are made the fools o’th’other senses, or else worth all the rest; still some uncertainty then, and uncanny too. Either my eyes are deceiving me, and my other senses—above all touch—are telling the truth, or else it’s my other senses which lie and the dagger is real, because I can see it, even if I can’t touch. Because I see thee still. It’s still there—but it’s changed. On thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood which were not so before. There’s no such thing. If the audience has been seeing the dagger through Macbeth’s eyes, imagining it hovering, sharp and deadly in the dark, then now we have to cover it with blood, and not a subtle smear either, but gouts, which sound more than spots, and in any case, the blood’s not just on the blade but on the dudgeon, the handle, the hilt; not a single clean stab, but a frenzy? A lot of invisible blood, in Macbeth’s mind’s eye, and that of the audience. There’s no such thing! (But we’ve pictured it, and we can’t unsee it now.) It is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes. I’m seeing things, giving them form and shape, a local habitation and a name (to quote Midsummer Night’s Dream, another world, or almost)—because of the bloody business. Murder, hastily planned, and now about to be performed.