So the dagger that wavers in the heated air of his soul does not surprise him,—"Come, let me clutch thee!" Really, he expected to grasp it; for it was precisely the kind of instrument he thought of using, the very shape and workmanship thereof. There's nothing to perturb until he draws from his belt its counterpart, yet sees the other still solid in the air. That sets him to pondering: his
"Eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest."
But, in spite of that, the murder in his brain reddens, sprinkles the blade and dudgeon with drops of blood, "which was not so before." Now when the illusion becomes the most intense, it is dispersed, as if the brain's own climax swelled to breaking. The collapse reminds him that the deed still waits to be accomplished: his dagger is yet clean. But its form is the bloody business which he has on hand to get through with before sweet morning. It seemed so clearly cut in his mind, and stayed so long before he could turn it out, that he thought it worth describing to his wife, as she indicates to us when at the banquet she calls his vision of Banquo
"Proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your fear;
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
Led you to Duncan."
Now when the ghost of Banquo enters to occupy Macbeth's chair, the actor of the king's part need not strain himself to put on the highest degree of an appalled feeling. "Are you a man?" whispers his wife; and Macbeth gives the true tone to his share of the scene when he answers,—
"Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
Which might appal the devil."
He starts, to be sure; but he simply remarks, "The table's full." "Here is a place reserved, sir." "Where?" he exclaims, so little annihilated by the painting of his own consciousness. It has dazed him, as when a mirror shifts distant sunlight full into the eyes: they blink, and judgment cannot readjust the sight. So he dimly asks, "Which of you have done this?" He is not "distilled to jelly with the act of fear," but simply amazed at this reproduction, so quick and palpable, of the deed just described to him by the hired murderer who, by doing that, put those "twenty trenched gashes" into his mind, whence they dripped over the chair of state. His talent for this spectral extemporizing has been indulged too often to overtake him with a special wonder. This unexpected Banquo may be dared, and even threatened:—
"Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me."
His wife blames his "flaws and starts" at such a moment of festivity when ceremony ought to be the sauce to meat; but they are not the ague-fits of a man who is dropping to pieces at a dreadful sight. The image of his guilt absorbs and diverts his behavior from the guests in a way that suggests to them a sudden flightiness:—
"Prythee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you?
Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too."