Note 244 — LECTURE X
Reading edition
It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says,
Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls.
There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of is that of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff that speaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in the preceding sentence,
Did heaven look on, And would not take their part?
And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt ... that sounds later through the despairing philosophy of King Lear.' It sounds a good deal earlier too; e.g. in Tit. And., iv. i. 81, and 2 Henry VI., ii. i. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethan tragedy.