Macbeth question???

Question

i dont really understand this part of Act 2 Scene .

I'm not sure really whats going on in this soliloquy. Macbeth is seeing a dagger but How would you direct these lines?

thanks for your help.

47 Which was not so before. There's no such thing:

48 It is the bloody business which informs

49 Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

50 Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

51 The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates

52 Pale Hecat's off'rings; and wither'd Murder,

53 Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

54 Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

55 With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design

56 Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

57 Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

59 And take the present horror from the time,

60 Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:

61 Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

Answer 1

It basically a scene where he is hallucinating. He is so overcome with ambition and corrupt with power, and theres always the suggestion of the supernatural "helping" him along, he "sees" the dagger which is basically something telling him to stop at nothing at anyone that might get in his way.