Act 2: Duncan's Murder & Guilt
The Dagger Soliloquy (Act 2, Scene 1)
As Macbeth prepares to murder Duncan, he hallucinates a floating dagger: “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” The dagger’s handle points toward him, as if inviting him to grasp it — suggesting that the murder is being offered to him rather than forced upon him. This raises the central question: is the dagger a supernatural apparition sent by the witches, or a projection of Macbeth’s own guilt-ridden imagination?
Macbeth tries to seize the dagger: “Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.” The gap between seeing and touching — between desire and reality — mirrors the gap between appearance and reality that runs through the play. As the soliloquy progresses, the dagger becomes covered in “gouts of blood” — a vision of the murder’s aftermath before it has even happened. Shakespeare uses the hallucination to show that Macbeth’s mind is already consumed by guilt before the act itself.
The dagger soliloquy (Act 2, Scene 1) shows Macbeth hallucinating a blood-covered dagger pointing toward Duncan’s chamber. It is deliberately ambiguous: the dagger could be a supernatural sign (sent by the witches) or a hallucination born of Macbeth’s own tortured conscience. Either reading supports the play’s themes.
Blood and Water — The Central Motif
After the murder, Shakespeare uses blood to explore the Macbeths’ contrasting reactions. Macbeth stares at his hands: “This is a sorry sight.” Lady Macbeth dismisses him: “A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.” She views emotional responses as weakness. But blood on their hands becomes the play’s most important symbol.
Macbeth’s despair peaks with: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.” The hyperbole is extraordinary: rather than the ocean cleaning his hands, his guilt would turn the entire sea red. The shift from the Latinate “incarnadine” to the blunt Anglo-Saxon “making the green one red” mirrors how horror strips away Macbeth’s eloquence.
Lady Macbeth returns from planting the daggers: “My hands are of your colour; but I shame / To wear a heart so white.” “Your colour” = red (guilt); “heart so white” = cowardice. She shames Macbeth while claiming equal guilt but superior composure.
She declares: “A little water clears us of this deed.” This line is devastatingly ironic. She believes physical washing removes moral guilt. This foreshadowing is among the play’s most powerful: in Act 5, the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth cries “Out, damned spot!” and “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” The woman who dismissed guilt easily is destroyed by it.
The Porter Scene (Act 2, Scene 3)
The Porter, drunk from celebrations, imagines himself as gatekeeper of Hell: “Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key.” This metaphor is deeply appropriate — Macbeth’s castle has literally become Hell. The Porter imagines admitting three sinners: a farmer who hoarded grain (self-interest), an equivocator who committed treason (deception), and a tailor who stole cloth (theft). Each mirrors Macbeth’s crimes.
The constant knocking symbolises fate approaching. Macduff — the man who will eventually kill Macbeth — waits on the other side. The knocking is persistent and unavoidable, just as Macbeth’s punishment is inevitable.
The Porter’s three sinners — a greedy farmer, a treasonous equivocator, and a thieving tailor — each mirror Macbeth’s crimes: self-interest, deception, and theft of the crown. The knocking at the gate symbolises fate (Macduff) approaching, and the castle-as-Hell metaphor shows that regicide has transformed Macbeth’s home into a place of damnation.
The Discovery and Reactions
Macduff discovers Duncan’s body with visceral horror: “O horror, horror, horror! / Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!” The triple repetition may echo the Holy Trinity, suggesting the murder offends God. Macbeth performs grief: “His silver skin laced with his golden blood” — precious colours emphasise Duncan’s royalty, but the elaborate language feels rehearsed. Donalbain’s “There’s daggers in men’s smiles” captures the theme of duplicity perfectly.
Immediately after the murder, Macbeth hears a voice cry: “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep.’” Sleep represents innocence, peace, and the natural order. By killing Duncan (who was sleeping), Macbeth has murdered sleep itself — he has destroyed his own capacity for rest and peace. Shakespeare personifies sleep as “innocent sleep, / Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care” — a healing, restorative force that Macbeth can never access again.
He also cannot say “Amen” when the guards cry out in their sleep: “I could not say ‘Amen’ / When they did say ‘God bless us.’” This shows Macbeth is spiritually cut off from God. A Jacobean audience would understand this as proof that regicide brings not just political chaos but spiritual damnation.