The Dagger

What It Is

The dagger that Macbeth sees floating before him, with its handle toward his hand, in Scene 1 of Act II, and which later gives way to the real daggers of the crime, those of the chamberlains of Duncan. The play moves from a dagger that may not exist to daggers stained with blood, and it is the instrument, more than the act, that the audience follows.

Where It Appears

In Scene 7 of Act I, Macbeth weighs the crime and places the dagger among the reasons against it: as host, he must shut the gates against Duncan's murderer and not wield the dagger himself. Lady Macbeth proposes to ply the chamberlains with drink and put the blame on them, and Macbeth completes the plan: use the chamberlains' own daggers and mark them with blood, so that no one doubts it was they.

In Scene 1 of Act II, alone in the courtyard, Macbeth sees a dagger in the air and wonders whether it is something palpable or the creation of a feverish brain. He then sees drops of blood on the blade and on the handle, which were not there before, and heads for the king's chamber.

In Scene 2 of Act II, Lady Macbeth says that she left the chamberlains' daggers in plain sight and that she would have done the deed herself if Duncan had not reminded her of her father. Macbeth returns with the crime committed and with the daggers he brought from the room, and he does not dare take them back; she carries them and stains the chamberlains with blood.

In Scene 3 of Act II, the daggers appear as evidence: Lennox says he found them still bloody on the chamberlains' pillows, and Macbeth, explaining why he killed them, describes their daggers wrapped in congealed blood.

In Scene 4 of Act III, after the ghost of Banquo, Lady Macbeth says that it is a painting of fear, like the dagger floating in the air which, in her husband's words, led him to Duncan. In Scene 6 of Act III, a lord uses the image for a political wish: that Scotland might hold feasts and banquets free of bloody daggers. And in Scene 2 of Act IV, the massacre at Fife brings the blade back: the murderers stab Lady Macduff's son.

What It Means

The dagger marks the passage from desire to act. In Scene 7 of Act I it is still a hypothesis that Macbeth refuses to wield; in Scene 1 of Act II it is a vision that calls him; and in Scene 2 of Act II it is a concrete object, with blood, that he cannot return. After the crime it survives as planted evidence and as a figure of speech, and it becomes a real blade again in the ambush of Banquo and the massacre at Fife.

The murder of Duncan happens offstage, and the only image the play gives of the act before it happens is the dagger of Scene 1 of Act II. The vision and then the instrument take the place of the crime the audience does not see: from the handle turned toward the hand to the daggers Macbeth cannot return, what the play shows is what the act leaves in the hands of the one who committed it.

Relationships

• Standard themes: Violence, Guilt, the Supernatural.
• Characters: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Macduff, who discovers the body in Scene 3 of Act II.
• Related symbols: the blood on the hands, the trace the dagger leaves on the one who holds it.