All kidding aside, I've got that cloven feelin': A new perspective on Shakespeare's chev'ril glove

Shakespeare precisely used words to create an imprecise (but not unsubstantial) experience. The relationships among words in his sentences (within and without the immediate context of his works) lead to ever-expanding swirls of significance. Assimilating Shakespeare is a deeply personal experience. Heminges and Condell, in their preface to the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare's plays -- (addressed aptly "To the Great Variety of Readers") -- declaimed that "It is yours that reade him."

Indeed.

The interpretations of Shakespeare -- analytically, philosophically, aesthetically, dramatically, sociologically, artistically, politically -- vary as widely as the persons who read him. But, ironically, the more we share our diverse perspectives of his works, the more deeply personal and uniquely satisfying becomes our Shakespearean experience.

Shakespeare was able to anchor us all to his art by recognizing and exploiting the protean quality of language. In riposte, the clown in Twelfth Night teaches Viola (and us all) that "A sentence is but a chev'ril glove to a good wit -- how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!" [II. v. 11-13] Shakespeare, whose father had been at one time a glover, clearly knew something about chev'ril gloves -- gloves made from kid leather, and known for their stretching capacity. Thus, the metaphor: chev'ril gloves -- like words and sentences -- can be turned inside out, and words and sentences in the control of a wit (i.e., someone of intelligence) can signify something wholly different than the "right," (or the ostensible), import that we first give them. In furtherance of the point (and keeping with the goat theme), Shakespeare has Touchstone in As You Like It woo the dull-witted rustic, Audrey, by declaring to her that "I am here with thee and thy goats as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths." [III. iii. 6-8] It's a throw-away line, until we sensitize ourselves to all the ways that it can be stretched to make its multiple points. The richness of the sentence grows with attention. Not only do we discern here the lascivious court fool, Touchstone, attempting to impose his salacious will upon the natural fool, Audrey, but we hear the pun on "goats" and "Goths"; we assimilate consciously or unconsciously that "capricious" etymologically derives from the Latin for "goat" (which symbolizes a "horny" disposition); we instinctively wince at the contrast between the disingenuous Touchstone and his self-comparison to "honest" Ovid; we compare the reference to Ovid among the barbarian "Goths" with the court-educated Touchstone among the rustic likes of simple Audrey; we witness the rocky mating dance (and anticipate the eventual mismatched coupling) between Touchstone and Audrey as well as between the court-conceived pastoral and the natural primitivism that will ensue as a consequence of the incursion of royalty into the forest of Arden.

Similarly, the cloven hoof of the goat (or of Satan or of the Christian Lamb) lends itself as a symbol of the duality of words. Using only whispered innuendos, "honest" Iago perniciously slices his victim with the keen two-sided edge of words. Tellingly, the defeated Othello invokes the fable [mere words!] that should have shown Iago to have the devil's feet. [V. ii. 285]

Shakespeare's sentences sentence us to hard labor in the effort to discern their ever-expanding signficance, but -- again, ironically, -- the experience liberates us into a realm of greater consciousness of life, love, and art.