He imagines the virtues of murdered Duncan pleading 'like angels, trumpet-tongu'd' against the horror he would perpetrate, and thus discovers in the ideal order of creation the ultimate measure of human desires and deeds. into prudential reasonings,' as Coleridge put it.3 But he soon transcends the prudential. (i.iv.50-53) Later, in the 'If it were done' soliloquy (i.vii.1-28), where he re-evaluates his attraction to that good which is evil, he does initially interpret 'the inward pangs and warnings of conscience.

When Duncan's appointment of Malcolm as Prince of Cumberland has stressed the failure of Chance to provide a fortuitous escape from decision-making, Macbeth's use of the imagery of sight and light reveals his awareness of the need to escape the world of vision if his longings are to become actuality - and unequivocally evil actuality, at that: Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires The eye wink at the hand yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. These expectations about the probable shape of the tragedy are reinforced by the later soliloquies of the first act. And, indeed, one might predict that Macbeth's tragic anagnorisis will involve the inescapability of the awareness that 'what is not' (incorporeal reality) is, however daringly he may choose to reject it as nothing. He must dissociate deeds from moral vision, realizing his 'horrid image' as English Studies in Canada, iv, 4, Winter 1978 380 'horrid deed' by disregarding its timeless significance. He must dedicate himself to expedient concerns that will blind him to the higher reality now imaginatively perceived. The very intensity of Macbeth's wish that Chance should play an unattended role - that it should preclude choice - arouses the expectation that the hero will never wear the coveted crown unless he can divorce his will from his moral sense.

Remembering that it is not Shakespeare's practice in introductory scenes to mislead the expectations of his audience, one might rightly expect that this soliloquy, which introduces the primary action of the play, the inner action,2 strikes a keynote to the tragedy. His imaginative activity functions ethiВ cally, painting a persuasively 'horrid image' of guilt rather than proffering happy anticipations of glory. Macbeth's perceptions of that reality are bodied forth by a vividly active imagination or fantasy. Two realities, then, confront each other on the battlefield of his consciousness, and it is the reality of ideas that has unqualified primacy.

Yet it also refers to the only reality that preoccupies him, regicide encountered in its timelessness, in its metaphysical being. 'What is not' refers to the crime and the guilt which as yet have no existence in time and place and, therefore, have no reality. fantastical' are the 'nothing' that fascinates and horrifies him. In his raptness, Macbeth loses all consciousness of physical reality his whole mind is absorbed in an imaginative encounter with the very idea of regicide and the very idea of its horror: 'nothing is, but what is not' (142). What desire projects as 'good,' conscience rejects as 'ill,' and, significantly, the awareness of evil predominates over the urge to contemplate the good. He experiences an agonizВ ing self-division, as enkindled desire strives with dampening conscience: he cannot dissociate the attractive notion of himself as king from the 'horrid image' of his assassin's role. 127-29 )1 initiate a drama of self-fulfilment which is also self-betrayal. He recognizes that the 'two truths' which serve as 'happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial theme' (i.iii. M A C B E T H ' S V I S I O N A R Y D A G G E R : H A L L U C I N A T I O N O R R E V E L A T I O N ? NINIAN MELLAMPHY University of Western Ontario I n his first soliloquy, Macbeth articulates his ambivalent response to the Witches' greetings and to the corroboration of their suggestiveness provided by Rosse and Angus. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Macbeth dagger