Was William Shakespeare high when he penned his plays?
State-of-the-art forensic technology from South Africa has been used to try and unravel the mystery of what was smoked in tobacco pipes found in the Stratford-upon-Avon garden of William Shakespeare.
Residue from clay tobacco pipes more than 400 years old from the playwright’s garden were analysed in Pretoria using a sophisticated technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry.
Chemicals from pipe bowls and stems which had been excavated from Shakespeare' garden and adjacent areas were identified and quantified during the forensic study. The artefacts for the study were on loan from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The gas technique is very sensitive to residues that can be preserved in pipes even if they had been smoked 400 years ago.
What were they smoking?
There were several kinds of tobacco in the 17th century, including the North American Nicotiana (from which we get nicotine), and cocaine (Erythroxylum), which is obtained from Peruvian coca leaves.
It has been claimed that Sir Francis Drake may have brought coca leaves to England after his visit to Peru, just as Sir Walter Raleigh had brought “tobacco leaves” (Nicotiana) from Virginia in North America.
In a recent issue of a Country Life magazine, Mark Griffiths has stimulated great interest in John Gerard’s Herbal, published in 1597 as a botanical book which includes engraved images of several people in the frontispiece. One of them (cited as “The Fourth Man”) is identified by Griffiths as William Shakespeare, but this identification is questionable.
There was unquestionable evidence for the smoking of coca leaves in early 17th century England, based on chemical evidence from two pipes in the Stratford-upon-Avon area.
Neither of the pipes with cocaine came from Shakepeare’s garden. But four of the pipes with cannabis did.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/william-shakespeare-high-cannabis-marijuana-stoned-plays-hamlet-macbeth-romeo-juliet-stratford-10446510.html