The Shakespearean play Macbeth conveys the actions and consequences of the power struggle in Scotland in the 11th century. It is a "dark drama... covered in portents of doom" and death (Kim 46). Throughout the play, Shakespeare focuses intensely on the use of daggers, both literal and figurative, and their often double-edged effect on the mind and conscience. [I know this needs work, but I have writer's block.] Macbeth centers on the murder of the devout King of Scotland, Duncan, by his subordinate Macbeth. After receiving the supernatural prophecy that he, Macbeth, would be a future king of Scotland, Macbeth immediately begins plotting Duncan's death. Before Macbeth's corruption, he is in fact seen as an honorable soldier and friend of Duncan. It is Macbeth's wife, Lady Macbeth, who learns of the witches' prophecy and becomes determined to make Macbeth take matters into his own hands. Shakespeare allows the reader to closely monitor both Macbeth's mind and imagination as he loses his nobility. On the night of the planned murder, Macbeth has a vision of two daggers, the future murder weapons, in his hands. As his mind drifts away from reality, he cries, “Are you not thou, fatal vision, sensitive to feeling as to sight?” (2.1.36). His delusional state arises from self-inflicted anxiety, which cuts into his consciousness more deeply than any physical blade. The more evil grows in Macbeth's heart, the more the apparent – ​​and ironic – reality of the dagger becomes for him. According to Harold Bloom, Shakespeare emphasizes how "Macbeth's imagination does the work of his will." (Bloom 77). In other words, through seeing the daggers, Macbeth allows his imagination to control his thoughts. He becomes a... middle of paper......, but his “crisis” still comes “more and more terrible” (Garber 712). At the time of Duncan's death, Lady Macbeth led her husband to clean the blood from his hands. Towards the end of the play, she begins to have visions – visions that will lead to her death – of blood on her hands as she sleeps. She becomes terribly distraught, just as Macbeth had previously shown, and by now Macbeth has been hardened by ruthless murders and an obsession with "lifeless materiality" (Arthos). Each of them experiences both sides of the sword – the sense of power that comes from greed and the terrible guilt that comes from injustice – and, regardless of the moment, both are unable to resist the hand of evil. They lose far more than they could ever hope to gain, their lives are empty and fruitless, and so they die; of madness, of madness, of selfishness.