By Tom de Castella, BBC News Magazine

It probably wasn’t on Shakespeare’s radar that his work would one day unite Megan Fox, Danielle Lineker and Lindsay Lohan. But it has – they all have Shakespeare quotations tattooed to their bodies. Why are more people getting such high-brow inkings?

The trend for long pieces of script is part of the tattoo’s journey from the margins to the mainstream.

Rarely a week passes without a celebrity being spotted with a defiant rallying cry, knowing aphorism or erudite quote inked to their bodies.

Angelina Jolie, the doyenne of written tattoos, was recently spotted with a long bit of text – thought to be Arabic – on her right arm. It joins a Tennessee Williams quote, the Arabic word for determination, and the geographical coordinates of her six children’s birthplaces, among others.