The Dictionary of Fabrics & Fashion Terms in Shakespeare

Cheveril (noun): soft elastic leather made of kidskin: KID LEATHER

As indicated above, a “cheveril glove” is another term for a kid glove.

The Fabric’s The Thing: Literal and Figurative References to Textiles in Selected Plays of William Shakespeare by Nancy J. Owens and Alan C. Harris tells us: “Cheveril or cheverel was kid leather noted for its elasticity and ability to be stretched.” They continue to expand on the above quote from Romeo and Juliet, writing, “Thus, in a heavy bout of word play, we have a joking yet admiring commentary on Romeo’s broad sense of humor and ability to pun.”

“A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin.” (Troilus and Cressida)

Owens and Harris expand on the quotation from Trolius and Cressida above. “The use of leather…is a fairly transparent metaphor based upon the almost trivial observation that leather could be worn on either side. Thus, ‘a plague of opinion; implies that, depending on the source and the situation, one could have either a good or a bad reputation.

Clown: ”You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!” (Twelfth Night)

We see echoes of references to cheveril’s ability to be worn on either side/turned inward or outward in Twelfth Night as well when the clown references “good wit” and how it quickly good wit and humor themselves can be “turned outward.”

In John H. Brittain’s Twelfth Night, Or, what You Will, a footnote gives us more insight into the meaning behind the Clown’s invocation of the term “cheveril” in this particular instance:

“The clown gives need expression to the truth that a sentence may often be made to bear a meaning entirely opposite to that which was intended. Such is the case only when the sentence contains some ambitious term or phrase.”

In “Glove Me Tender: Shakespeare in the Skin Trade,” Roy Rosenbaum investigates skin images in Shakespeare, with a specific focus on “the calfskin or dogskin (yes, alas, dogskin) used to make gloves in the Elizabethan era.” He writes that Shakespeare is famously the son of a glover, John Shakespeare: “There is a longstanding, rather bitter scholarly debate over an anecdote linking young Will Shakespeare to his father’s calf butchery, glove-skin trade, linking, in fact, slaughter and poetry. The anecdote, retailed by the late-17th-century memoirist and gossip John Aubrey, has it that when the boy Shakespeare ‘killed a calf, he would do it in high style and make a speech.’ Some interpret the speech as a funeral ode upon the slaughtered calf and some as a reference to an Elizabethan pantomime called Killing the Calf, which Shakespeare might have seen performed. The historian Ian Wilson finds it reflected in Hamlet when Polonius recalls playing Julius Caesar–’I was killed in the Capitol. Brutus killed me’–and Hamlet remarks, ‘It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.’” We are lucky to have Rosenbaum’s insight into the skin images in these texts.

It is also extremely useful to know that in Shakespeare’s youth, he first inscribed lines onto dogskin or calfskin, specifically the outlines of the patterns that his father used to cut gloves out of skins. Rosenbaum argues that “The lines that “wrote” the shape of a human hand upon the skins and inscribed on that hand the decorative patterns typically cut into the back of the hands of Elizabethan gloves.” It’s interesting to connect the act of inscribing/carving on leather to the act of writing, especially considering Shakespeare’s relationship to his father, the glover.

“CHEVERIL” ALSO APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:

HENRY VIII

Beshrew me, I would,
And venture maidenhead for't; and so would you,
For all this spice of your hypocrisy:
You, that have so fair parts of woman on you,
Have too a woman's heart; which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;
Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts,
Saving your mincing, the capacity
Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive,
If you might please to stretch it.