Why does Touchstone marry Audrey in As You Like It?

On the face of it, marriage between Touchstone and Audrey seems like a strange idea, to say the least. Apart from the enormous gulf in intelligence between the crafty fool and the ignorant peasant girl, there's the little matter of their decidedly earthy attitudes towards love and lust. One would've thought that Touchstone and Audrey would be better off satisfying their carnal desires outside the confines of traditional marriage.

Yet despite this, Touchstone still feels somewhat uneasy about "living in bawdry" as he puts it. He seems unaccountably attached to the prevailing social convention, which frowns upon sex outside marriage. His reasons for getting hitched to Audrey aren't conventional, to be sure—there's no real love or social advantage involved—but at least he and his intended will be able to present a more respectable facade to the world than they currently do. And for Touchstone, that's important.

This is rather a baffling question. In Act III scene 3, when Touchstone tries to marry Audrey as quickly as possible, he calls her a "slut," recognising that she has had many relationships before, and also identifies that she will probably be unfaithful to him after their marriage. However, nonetheless, he continues to press ahead, trying to get married as soon as possible. From what we can infer, it appears as if his own lust seems to be acting here. However, overall, we can identify that the marriage between Touchstone and Audrey acts as a kind of anti-Romantic coupling that acts as a foil to the other relationships in the play. Their marriage is a travesty of romantic love and marriage, and the way in which Touchstone uses his education and language to further his lustful advances on Audrey stands in direct contrast to the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando.

One thing to remember is that rules of propriety were different in Shakespeare's day than many people hold them to be today. In Shakespeare's day, a young unmarried woman remaining chaste was considered a virtue. Audrey may be a simple, uneducated country girl, but she evidently very much prides herself in her virtuous chastity and is not likely to relinquish her virtue very easily. What's more, Touchstone is really only interested in a relationship with Audrey for the sake of satisfying his lustful desires. If he could get her to agree to yield her virtue without marrying her, he would probably do just that. However, he knows very well that, being the virtuous country girl she is, she absolutely will not yield her virtue unless she is married; hence, Touchstone devises a scheme to marry her.

We especially see Audrey proclaim her virtue in the first scene in which he courts her, Act 3, Scene 3. When Touchstone tries to wile her with his educated, witty tongue and she fails to understand, he then states he wishes she was more "poetical," and Audrey refers to her virtuous nature in her reply:

I do not know what "poetical" is: is it honest in deed and word? is it a true thing? (17-18)

In these lines, the word "honest" has a double meaning. In one sense, she is referring to being "honorable and true," but a chaste woman is also considered an "honest" woman (Shakespeare Navigators); hence, with just these two simple lines, Audrey shows how much she values all of her honorable virtues, especially her chastity.

We also learn about Touchstone's devious plan to marry her and leave her in this same scene. Jaques comes forward and cautions Touchstone not marry her under the clergyman Sir Oliver as the marriage may not be fully legally binding. Touchstone's reply is to say he doesn't mind if the marriage is not legal as it would make it easier for him to leave her. Yet we must question his sincerity in saying he does not want to legitimately marry her, for next he marries her, along with the other couples, under Hymen, the Greek god of marriage ceremonies, which they certainly would consider to be a very binding marriage. Hence, while it is probably true that Touchstone is marrying Audrey to satisfy his lust, it's unlikely that he really will leave her in the end.