Shakespeare and Cannabis

Sonnet 76:

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth and where they did proceed?

O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,

And you and love are still my argument;

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old,


So is my love still telling what is told.

-- William Shakespeare

Here's an aspect of Shakespeare's work your high school English teacher probably never mentioned: it's possible the Bard was toking while he toiled over his plays and sonnets.

Ten years ago, Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa lead a study that examined pipes that were exhumed from Shakespeare's garden. They found traces of marijuana on the pipes, and now Thackeray wants permission to retrieve the Bard's actual bones and give him a drug test.

What sparked the investigation into the possible drug habits of one of the most famous writers of the Elizabethan age, if not all of English literature? Two phrases in Sonnet 76 (see the whole poem at the top of this article), "noted weed" and "compounds strange," stuck out as possibly referencing drug use, and Thackeray believes at least one of them refers specifically to cannabis, and may have been Old Will's muse. (Another of his works actually uses the phrase "tenth muse" in reference to a chemical compound, but it's more likely that that reference is pointing to cocaine or opium.)

Not that cannabis - or at least hemp - was a rarity in Elizabethan England. The Queen's Navy depended on ropes made from hemp fiber to use on their sails, for one thing, and hemp was woven into shoes, floor mats, and clothing in much the same fashion as sisal or jute are today. In fact, some historians believe that hemp was second only to wheat as a sixteenth-century crop.

In any case, drawing on his ten-year-old discovery of marijuana on Shakespeare's pipes, Thackeray has applied to the Church of England for permission to examine the remains of the Bard himself, as well as those of his wife Anne and his daughter Susanna. In doing so, he hopes to discover the cause of the writer's death, and also test the remains for drugs.

In an interview with the press, Thackeray explained that, "…if there is any hair, if there is any keratin from the fingernails or toenails, then we will be in a position to undertake chemical analysis on extremely small samples for marijuana."

In addition to the required permission from the Anglican Church, there's the legend that Shakespeare's grave is cursed, a rumor borne out by the engraving on his gravestone, which reads, "Blessed be the man that spares these stones / And cursed be he who moves my bones."

Thackeray isn't concerned about the curse, though. Thanks to modern technology, laser surface scanning will allow him and his team to examine the remains without having to actually dig them up. It is possible that a tooth might be required in order to perform DNA analysis, but Thackeray isn't worried about that, either. Shakespeare's engraved curse doesn't actually mention teeth, after all.