Taggare il Bardo. Shakespeare e i graffiti

“Shakespeare and/in graffiti” might be the title of a chapter that has still to be written. In fact, I do not have knowledge of any study devoted to the subject, even though many traces of Shakespeare have been disseminated in the graffiti world and, vice versa, the grammar of graffiti has often been used to update Shakespeare and his work. The use of graffiti connected with Shakespeare is widespread and range from cinema to visual art and back to theatre. My essay shows that among the many offshoots of the Elizabethan playwright in our contemporary culture Shakespearean graffiti seem to be particularly meaningful. From the walls of palaces, houses and trains, in capital cities or small villages, either real or fictional, all these graffiti can be useful to understand the way we perceive and appropriate Shakespeare and his work and also, and above all, the world we live in.