Macduff's son is a character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth (1606). His name and age are not established in the text, and, typical of Shakespeare's child characters, the boy is cute and clever. While Lady Macduff and her children are mentioned in Holinshed's Chronicle as the innocent victims of Macbeth's cruelty, Shakespeare is completely responsible for developing Macduff's son as a character. The boy appears in only one scene (4.2), in which he briefly banters with his mother and is then murdered by Macbeth's thugs. The scene's purpose is twofold: it provides Shakespeare's audience with a thrillingly horrific moment, and it underscores the depravity into which Macbeth has fallen. The brutal scene has often been cut in modern performance. Macduff's son is viewed as a symbol of the youthful innocence Macbeth hates and fears, and the scene has been compared by one critic to the biblical Slaughter of the Innocents.
Read more about Macduff's Son: Role in The Play, Cuts in Performance, Analysis, Performances
Famous quotes containing the word son:
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)