SOURCE: "Ritual as an Instrument of Grace: Parental Blessings in Richard HI, All's Well That Ends Well, and The Winter's Tale," in True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age, edited by Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry, University of Ilinois Press, 1992, pp. 169-200.

In this excerpt, Young discusses the significance of the parental blessing in The Winter's Tale—both the offering and the denial—and its function in conveying grace.

The parental blessing was one of the most important and pervasive rituals of Renaissance England.³ Indeed, it seems to have been peculiar to England during the Renaissance.⁴ It goes back at least to the fourteenth century, and probably much earlier; and it appears to have been practiced by Catholics and Protestants, Puritans and non-Puritans, with little variation in form or meaning into the early seventeenth century.⁵ In "wellordered" households the ritual took place...