Anyone familiar with Macbeth? Particularly Macbeth's speech in Act II scene i?

Question

In Macbeth's speech ("Is this a dagger which I see before me,/The handle toward my hand?....) does he express hatred, loyalty, glee and/or hesitation? Also if you could explain why or why not for each, wow, that would be MOST helpful!! Thank you!

P.S. Please don't answer based on the snippet of the speech I put in, it's much more than that!

Answer 1

Hesitation. He is planning to kill a good friend of his, the first time he has ever done that. He realizes that it is easy to talk the talk (his wife does that) but not to walk the walk.

Answer 2

I think that a better answer is to the nature of the author: Shakespeare is such an enduring author because he does not define the motivations of his subjects. MacBeth is in conflict and, depending on the actor, is experiencing all of these things or none of them.

Imagine yourself to be MacBeth at the OPENING of the play. Who are you? Who do you feel you are? Now try to imagine yourself being thrown into that situation? How would you react?

Remember this is a simple (by modern standards) man thrown into an overwhelming situation...and he doesn't have a dozen people on Yahoo Answers to help him figure it all out. :)

Answer 3

It seems to be hesitation, since he goes on to talk about how it's there and how it's not and how it could be his imagination and that stuff. He's kind of thinking, "Am I really going to go through with it since I'm holding this dagger? Is this all real?"

Answer 4

I watched that play today, He was expressing it in Hatred and Hesitation at that point because he was still thinking about if he wanted to commit this murder and kill with his daggers.
He did this for the loyalty.
Too bad his head gets cut off at the end and his wife kills her self because of it. ):
Oh well :)

Answer 5

The way I took it that's a huge part of showing how he was going insane. I think he was panicking a bit but at the same time, too scared to go back.