Essay: Exploring the Duality of Macbeth’s Mind.

“Mine eyes are made the fools o’th’ other senses“ (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1, l.44).
But after the illusion has hardly entirely vanished, Macbeth realizes with full clarity what it is actually about – namely the pre-announcement of the murder: “It is the bloody business which informs / Thus to mine eyes.“ (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1, l.48-49). He discovers this with his astonishing ability of self-analysis, which here even explains the seemingly ‘supernatural’ as a subjective self-created conception. Rationality and irrationality – clear self-insight and obsession with a dark compulsion – live closely together inside him from the very beginning (Clemen, p.47, l.32ff.).
When the imaginary dagger then disappears again, another vision rises in his fantasy: He imagines the hemisphere covered by the night as a conspiracy of all dark and evil forces and senses a secret agreement between himself and the bewitching demonic powers in the world, with whom he sees himself in league. Here the climax is constituted by the image of personified murder which appears before his spiritual eye: “[…] and withered Murder […] with his stealthy pace, / With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design / Moves like a ghost.“ (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1, l.52–56). The personified murder is “alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf” (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1, l.53) and anticipates Macbeth’s own murderous deed. At this point Macbeth projects his own intention into self-conceived imaginations of his environment which, in this way, he seems to turn into the accomplice and instigator for his own plan (see Clemen, p.48, ll.27ff.).
The lightness, or even implicitness, with which Shakespeare lets all these conceptions follow one another and groups around the central image of the spooky and haggard murder, is a sign of the intensity and rapidity with which Macbeth’s imagination moves forward (see Clemen, p.49, l.3-9).
In his delusion he then also addresses the earth and asks it not to hear his steps, so that his plan and the deed would stay undetected: “Thou sure and firm-set earth, / Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear / Thy very stones prate of my whereabout“ (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1, l.56–58). It appears to him like a sort of support, in contrast to the world of the invisible and imagined which has become overpowering (Clemen, p.49, l.15-18).
Here Macbeth talks like someone who observes himself in a dream and he speaks of his steps as if they were separated from him. This split of his character – the possibility of facing himself like a stranger – was already noticeable during his speeches in the first act1 (Clemen, p.49, l.24-29).
Just like in a mirror, this monologue shortly before the deed once again shows us quite plainly what kind of person Macbeth is and what it looks like inside his mind (Clemen, p.50, l.16-18). Step by step, an inner process of experience is being unveiled in front of the audience, and by talking about his inner illusions – which surround him as his actual reality – Macbeth here expresses things of which he was only partially aware.
Thereby, the astonishing part of Macbeth’s character is this juxtaposition of, on the one hand, obsessively being included in his intention and deed and, on the other hand, the clear suffering view of his own doing and conduct (Nauman, p.387, l.31-34), because even though he knows exactly that his sacrilegious undertaking is wrong, it appears to the audience that there is a necessity for him to act as if, in a way, he could not do otherwise than to murder the king.
During the entire monologue the reality around him seems to disappear; his whole attention is only fixed on his vision. On the one hand, a deeper layer inside Macbeth himself is being uncovered here – whereby, however, in this monologue a moral debate was foregone – but on the other hand, the view also leaks to the outside and distant horizons become visible. Just like the afterlife in the apocalyptic vision of the accusing angels was thematized in the first major monologue (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7, ll.1-28), the supernatural world of evil appears here this time (Clemen, p.50, l.25-33.).
Generally, Macbeth is prone to isolation and self-forsakenness of monological expression. Thus already during his first encounter with the witches in act one, scene three, it became repeatedly clear how he – completely beside himself and under the impression of the idea that, through regicide, he could become king himself – forgets about his surroundings and dreamily talks to himself (Clemen, p.51, l.7-12). That is why in this scene Banquo refers to him twice as “rapt” (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, l.57; l.145) and also has to pull him out of his ‘mental world’ twice, into which he sinks again and again since the beginning, in order to bring him back onto the ground of facts, into reality.
Immediately following his murder of Duncan, too, he seems quite unable to differentiate between his imagination and reality in his utter confusion since, when suddenly hearing an initially inexplicable knock right afterwards, Macbeth is still so dazed by his just committed deed and out of his senses that he is incapable of classifying where, or which ‘world’, it comes from.
At first he probably must surmise that – like before with the floating dagger or the voices that he suddenly heard (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2, ll.36-44: “Sleep no more. / Macbeth does murder sleep – the innocent sleep, […] Macbeth shall sleep no more.“) and on which he sees how vengeance already seizes him – he is dealing with another vision which is being projected to him by his imagination.