Shakespeare Magazine 02

Shakespeare tattoos
Brooke’s
Literature who specialise in Shakespeare.
One young woman with the “fierce”
quote is five-foot-one Liz Robertson. She
fondly recalls the theatre experiences of her
schooldays, and uses her tattoo as a mantra
for when times get tough. Another “fierce”
woman is blogger ThePrimalPen, a recovering
anorexic. Paige, meanwhile, is reminded that
life is worth living by her “to be or not to be”
tattoo, because she believes Hamlet chose “to
be” and Shakespeare knows what he’s talking
about.
Sisters Janine and Ursula Vero have
“I.iii.66-71” tattooed on their arms, a
reference to the passage in As You Like It that
describes Celia and Rosalind as “coupled and
inseparable”. Trainee midwife and mother
Emma Medeiros has “sleep thou, and I shall
winde thee in my arms” from A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.
As you can see, although some people love
tattoos purely for their aesthetic value, most
literary tattoos represent something deeply
personal, as well as the wearer’s connection to
a particular text. Getting Shakespeare’s words
tattooed in a visible place is a very public way
of expressing a private connection with a story
or a phrase. When I got the tattoo on my
back, the first of three literary tattoos, I was
writing my undergraduate dissertation on The
Tempest, but this particular line had already
been haunting me for years.
“We all were sea-swallow’d, though some cast
again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge”
tattoo artist
is Samantha Ford of
Silver Needles II in
Southend-on-Sea.
It’s one of those lines that resonates beyond
its context, as all the best ones do. In many
ways my tattoo is a synecdoche of the skin.
The line represents the play, which represents
the works, which represents the cultural
omnipresence that is Shakespeare, and his role
in my life and career. My tattoo is a badge
that declares me a Shakespearean.
It is also, however, on the personal side of
the coin, a reminder that everything in the
past, even the difficult bits, is prologue to a
future that’s yet to come.
More from: Contrariwise www.contrariwise.org
and The Word Made Flesh www.tattoolit.com
44 SHAKESPEARE magazine