Patrick Stewart (2010)
Ian McKellen (1979)
“Is this
a dagger which I see before me,
The
handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have
thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou
not, fatal vision, sensible
To
feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger
of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding
from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see
thee yet, in form as palpable
As this
which now I draw.
Thou
marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such
an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes
are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else
worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on
thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was
not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the
bloody business which informs
Thus to
mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature
seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The
curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale
Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd
by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose
howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With
Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves
like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not
my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very
stones prate of my whereabout,
And take
the present horror from the time,
Which now
suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to
the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[a bell rings]
I go, and
it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it
not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That
summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
~Act II, Scene I
