!Shakespeare tattoos
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”
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SHAKESPEARE magazine
Brooke’s 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.
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More from: Contrariwise www.contrariwise.org and The Word Made Flesh www.tattoolit.com