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Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905.
PAGE 490
NOTES ON MACBETH

   Mal.                                     Be comforted:
Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.
   Macd.  He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
   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

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