Mal.  Dispute it like a man.

Macd. I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man: 
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.—­

Three interpretations have been offered of the words ’He has no children.’

(a) They refer to Malcolm, who, if he had children of his own, would not at such a moment suggest revenge, or talk of curing such a grief.  Cf. King John, III. iv. 91, where Pandulph says to Constance,

You hold too heinous a respect of grief,

and Constance answers,

     He talks to me that never had a son.

(b) They refer to Macbeth, who has no children, and on whom therefore Macduff cannot take an adequate revenge.

(c) They refer to Macbeth, who, if he himself had children, could never have ordered the slaughter of children.  Cf. 3 Henry VI. V. v. 63, where Margaret says to the murderers of Prince Edward,

     You have no children, butchers! if you had,
     The thought of them would have stirred up remorse.

I cannot think interpretation (b) the most natural.  The whole idea of the passage is that Macduff must feel grief first and before he can feel anything else, e.g. the desire for vengeance.  As he says directly after, he cannot at once ‘dispute’ it like a man, but must ‘feel’ it as a man; and it is not till ten lines later that he is able to pass to the thought of revenge.  Macduff is not the man to conceive at any time the idea of killing children in retaliation; and that he contemplates it here, even as a suggestion, I find it hard to believe.

For the same main reason interpretation (a) seems to me far more probable than (c).  What could be more consonant with the natural course of the thought, as developed in the lines which follow, than that Macduff, being told to think of revenge, not grief, should answer, ’No one who was himself a father would ask that of me in the very first moment of loss’?  But the thought supposed by interpretation (c) has not this natural connection.

It has been objected to interpretation (a) that, according to it, Macduff would naturally say ‘You have no children,’ not ’He has no children.’  But what Macduff does is precisely what Constance does in the line quoted from King John.  And it should be noted that, all through the passage down to this point, and indeed in the fifteen lines which precede our quotation, Macduff listens only to Ross.  His questions ’My children too?’ ‘My wife killed too?’ show that he cannot fully realise what he is told.  When Malcolm interrupts, therefore, he puts aside his suggestion with four words spoken to himself, or (less probably) to Ross (his relative, who knew his wife and children), and continues his agonised questions and exclamations.  Surely it is not likely that at that moment the idea of (c), an idea which there is nothing to suggest, would occur to him.