Puritans and Marriage Contracts

Angelo may have some of the characteristics of the stereotypical Puritan. Historical Puritans of the Jacobean period were, however, much more in favor of marriage than Angelo seems to have been. The Puritan preacher William Gouge, for instance, published an enormous tome on marriage and other household matters, titled Domesticall Duties, in 1622. Gouge, unsurprisingly, affirms that the husband is the ultimate "head" of the household. Less expected, perhaps, is his emphasis on mutuality and reciprocity in marriage. (He argues, for instance, against the common view that adultery in men is less serious than in women -- against the so-called 'double standard'.)

William Gouge is also very clear that the sort of contracts that seem to have existed between Claudio and Juliet, and between Angelo and Mariana, were virtually as binding as marriage itself. Here is what Gouge writes about such contracts in his enormous domestic manual:

Of a Contract, What It is?
... The right making of a firm contract consisteth in two things:
1. In an actual taking of each other for espoused man and wife.
2. In a direct promise of marrying each other within a convenient time.
So as a form of contract may be made to this purpose:
first, the man taking the woman by the hand to say, I, A. take thee, B., to my espoused wife, and do faithfully promise to marry thee in time meet and convenient. And then the woman again taking the man by the hand to say, I, B., to take thee, A., to my espoused husband, do faithfully promise to yield to be married to thee in time meet and convenient. This mutual and actual taking of one another for espoused man and wife in the time present, and a direct promise of marrying one another afterward, setteth such a right and property of the one in the other as cannot be alienated without licence had from the great Judge of heaven, who hath by his divine ordinance settled that right ...

By this formula, it seems then that the "great Judge of heaven" overrules Angelo in the case of Claudio and Juliet, and judges Angelo himself, in his alienation of Mariana.

It's clear too that both parties are supposed to promise, to speak, to make the contract binding. If one recalls the "espousal" passage in The Taming of the Shrew (2.1 -- where Baptista says to Petruchio and Kate, "give me your hands"), only Petruchio speaks and promises, and yet the contract is treated by all as binding. At the end of Measure for Measure, we also hear only Isabella's silence, although she is prompted twice by the Duke to give her hand and her promise. At 5.1.503: "Give me your hand and say you will be mine"; then, at 547-8, perhaps feeling that the public offer of a hand is premature, the Duke proposes, "... if you'll a willing ear incline, / What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine."

At least the Duke ends by recognizing mutuality and reciprocity, but the actual contract is still in question, an if.

The letter of the law

Laws and contracts are plot generators in both The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. It is Antonio's (perhaps unaccountable) willingness to enter into the bond with Shylock that generates the crisis of the trial scene in 4.1, providing incidentally the occasion for Portia's tour de force performance as a "young and learned doctor" of law. In Measure for Measure, the long-deferred performance of the contract between Angelo and Mariana provides the legal premise for the famous plot device of the 'bed-trick'. The disguised Duke assures Mariana of the contractual basis of her sleeping with Angelo when he says "Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all. / He is your husband on a precontract" (4.1.70-71).

Both plays seem to suggest, by their plots, the wrongheadedness of sticking to the letter of the law. Shylock condemns himself by sticking to the terms of his bond, by craving only "the law" and nothing more. Angelo likewise insists upon the law, thereby preparing judgment for himself. Justifying his rigorous condemnation of Claudio, Angelo declares, "When I that censure him do so offend /Let mine own judgment pattern out my death" (2.1.29-30). It will only take Angelo until the next scene -- his first meeting with Isabella -- to reach that when.

And yet, laws and contracts aren't exactly cancelled by the comedic endings. Those with secret or super-clever knowledge, like Portia and the Duke, seem to be able to insist on super-literal meanings of the law which magically dissolve difficulties. So, Portia sticks even closer to the literal terms of Shylock's bond than Shylock, insisting that he may take his pound of flesh but no blood. And Angelo in fact hasn't condemned himself by his own rigor against fornicators, since he isn't a fornicator himself. In Shakespeare's time, a betrothed couple who had consummated their betrothal by sleeping together would indeed have been regarded as legally married.