Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
— Macbeth, Macbeth · William Shakespeare
Is that a dagger floating in front of me, its handle turned toward my hand?
On his way to murder Duncan, Macbeth hallucinates the weapon. The floating dagger is his ambition made visible — a mind so bent on the deed that it conjures the instrument. He cannot tell whether it is fate leading him or his own guilty imagination.