The following reasons may be given for the hallucination view:
(1) We remember that Macbeth has already seen one hallucination, that of
the dagger; and if we failed to remember it Lady Macbeth would remind us
of it here:
This is the very painting of your fear;
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
Led you to Duncan.
(2) The Ghost seems to be created by Macbeth's imagination; for his
words,
now they rise again
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
describe it, and they echo what the murderer had said to him a little
before,
Safe in a ditch he bides
With twenty trenched gashes on his head.
(3) It vanishes the second time on his making a violent effort and
asserting its unreality:
Hence, horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!
This is not quite so the first time, but then too its disappearance
follows on his defying it:
Why what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.
So, apparently, the dagger vanishes when he exclaims, 'There's no such
thing!'
(4) At the end of the scene Macbeth himself seems to regard it as an
illusion:
My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.
Pages:
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724