When the news of this brutal "fry-up" reaches Macduff we have his shocked answer. This is a time when a man can be expected to speak the truth. He says:

Act Iv, 3: "What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop."

His friends, who obviously know his secret, immediately react to this, and say something which in other circumstances would have been considered extremely tactless. Malcolm replies:

"Dispute it like a man." The evidence months. It is now possible to comprehend the prophesy of the three weird sisters when they said:

"None of woman born shall harm Macbeth."

By now the difficult point of this interpretation must be clear. Macduff should have been a rooster. But Shakespeare was never very strong on his historical facts and he may very well have considered it added to the poignancy of the tragedy that Macduff should have drabber plumage. He may quite easily have muddled his ornithological facts. However he leaves no doubt in our mind that Macduff is a hen and not a rooster, for in the last scene (V, viii) Macbeth, a man who seldom minced words, says to Macduff the immortal words:

Lay on, Macduff. Brian Falk 1G