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Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905.
PAGE 492
NOTES ON MACBETH

not follow that he knew he was repeating them; or that, if he did, he remembered the sense they had previously borne; or that, if he did remember it, he might not use them now in another sense.

 

NOTE FF.

THE GHOST OF BANQUO

     I do not think the suggestions that the Ghost on its first appearance is Banquo's, and on its second Duncan's, or vice versa, are worth discussion. But the question whether Shakespeare meant the Ghost to be real or a mere hallucination, has some interest, and I have not seen it fully examined.

     The following reasons may be given for the hallucination view:

     (1) We remember that Macbeth has already seen one hallucination, that of the dagger; and if we failed to remember it Lady Macbeth would remind us of it here:

This is the very painting of your fear;
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
Led you to Duncan.

     (2) The Ghost seems to be created by Macbeth's imagination; for his words,

                   now they rise again
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,

describe it, and they echo what the murderer had said to him a little before,

                  Safe in a ditch he bides
With twenty trenched gashes on his head.

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