Shakespearean Contracts and Marriage as Misdirection

Throughout Shakespeare’s work, contracts, whether in the form of a literal written document (such as the picture above) or a spoken promise of sorts (such as Viola/Cessario’s promise to Olivia that she/he will never marry a man), often play a key role in both the surface and underlying functioning of the play. Specifically, it is in Shakespeare’s focus on language and word play, and the deceptions/complications possible through this, that these contracts draw much of their significance/power in his works (the specificity of Shylock’s own contract proving to be his undoing). Yet the contract of marriage remains surprisingly untouched; while individuals (such as Bertram in All’s Well) might be “tricked” into getting married to someone in the first place, the actual marriage often appears to lack duplicity or major incident, the characters simply marrying once the time has come. I wonder, was this simply necessitated by each play’s narrative (the weddings serving often acting in part as a conclusion) or was this more of a reflection of the age Shakespeare inhabited and perhaps his desire to (while still playing with the lines of gender and sexuality) not alienate his potential audience through a total break in the current social norm?

It seems likely, or at least possible, that Shakespeare’s preservation of the “sanctity” of the marriage contract would've been used to simultaneously mask the often more fluid treatment of gender throughout the rest of the work[s]. Consider the conclusion of Twelfth Night. The Duke continues to refer to Viola/Cessario as his “boy,” even after the reveal of Viola’s true nature; this appears to be playing with the notion of the Duke’s sexuality, with a possible interpretation being that the Duke would/does/will love Viola Cessario no matter her/his form. However, it is made clear that before the wedding of Viola and the Duke, Viola will once more dawn her “woman’s weeds.” Thus, the two will be married as man and wife, adhering to the social standard, and in doing so possibly reassuring the piece’s original audience. A similar situation occurs in As You Like It, with the relationship of Orlando and Ganymede/Rosalind toeing the line between homosocial and homoerotic, until the quadruple wedding, at which point Rosalind abandons her disguise and returns to what would be considered the feminine norm in the play/society.  These examples lend credibility to the argument that Shakespeare might have in particular sought to preserve the “sanctity” of the marriage contract to allow for the relatively gray area of each couple’s sexuality to be addressed while still adhering to the social norm.