Parental Blessings and Curses in Shakespeare’s Plays

Abstract

Parental blessing as an instrument of. grace was a familiar and cherished custom in the Tudor-Stuart period. In Shakespeare's plays, where family is a central theme, blessing has an association with parental authority or filial duty. The blessing ritual represents the powerful spiritual bond between parents and children or marks a joyful reunion or reconciliation of the family. Furthermore, it symbolizes the desire for social order and harmony or draws its sacred power to enhance the children's welfare and prosperity. Parental blessing as a conceptual thesis and its antithesis parental curse run throughout Shakespeare's plays. Besides reflecting Renaissance customs, Shakespeare uses parental blessing for a variety of theatrical purposes: it evokes dramatic effects and emotions, and reveals a character and identity to facilitate a highly theatrical scene. The blessing also appears in distorted form; it may be used for the sake of burlesque or parody, or involve a certain degree of irony. The distortion of blessing as a maimed ritual signals that the natural order of things is turned upside down. A parent's refusal to bless or curse a child denotes a failure of the loving bond that existed between parent and child and reinforced by performing the blessing ritual. And the parental curse is connected with destructive tyranny which provokes special dread and awe. Parental blessings and curses express some of Shakespeare's most important themes and values. Parental blessings may convey love, generosity, good will, reconciliation, reunion, and divine power intended to bless the child. On the contrary parental curses, the language of fury, hatred, helplessness, and despair wrought to its uttermost, are disastrous, because they amount to a cutting-off of the loving bond between parent and child. Yet the act of cursing and blessing are intimately related, since each is a form of prayer as well as a sign of the potential duplicity. Shakespeare metaphorically uses the parental blessing and curse as the conceptual dialectic to convey his important contrasting themes; order and disorder. In his plays, blessings and curses have potent power and similar functions, whether spoken by fathers or mothers. But his ultimate purpose seems to renew and recover patriarchal order and social stability through the medium of women's power of language.