Pubdate: Sat, 03 Mar 2001
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  PO Box 496, London E1 9XN, United Kingdom
Fax: +44-(0)171-782 5046
Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Author: Helen Rumbelow

SHAKESPEARE MAY HAVE SMOKED HIS DARK LADY

SHAKESPEARE may have written on drugs, according to new research.

The Bard, a married father of three children, was linked to the drug 
by forensic analysis of pipes found in his home at Stratford Upon 
Avon.

Although the evidence was circumstantial, scientists from the 
Transvaal Museum in Pretoria said that the results were a revelation 
about drug use in 17th-century England.

Two of the 24 pipes they tested bore traces of cocaine, the first 
time the drug has been found in Europe before the 19th century. 
Others had traces of a chemical called myristic acid, a 
hallucinogenic derived from plants, and traces of cannabis and 
tobacco.

"The cocaine found is really quite remarkable," said Dr Francis 
Thackeray, a palaeontologist who co-wrote the article in the South 
African Journal of Science.

"Cocaine was recorded in Europe about 200 years ago, but to our 
knowledge never this early," he said.

"The Spanish had access to it at that time in the Americas but the 
fact that it was smoked in England at that time is a first." He was 
also excited about the discovery of cannabis. Although hemp was 
widely used for ropes and even printing Shakespeare's early works, 
there was little evidence that it was smoked.

"Apparently no chemical analyses have been undertaken to determine 
what substances other than tobacco may have been smoked in England 
during the 17th century," he said.

"Was hemp used as a hallucinogen in Elizabethan times?" he asked.

"Notably just one year before Shakespeare's birth, G da Orta had 
written Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, which included 
reference to the properties of resinous cannabis."

But one of the main arguments to support the theory that Shakespeare 
was a dope-head as well as a genius was in his work, Dr Thackeray 
said.

The Bard uses complex imagery of darkness, poison and, such as in 
Sonnet 27, "a journey in his head" he said, with even the dark lady 
of the sonnets a possible reference to the creative but dangerous 
forces of drugs. "There is some suggestive evidence in Shakespeare's 
own writing," he said.

"In Sonnet 76 he refers to the 'invention of a noted weed' which may 
have been a reference to cannabis," he said. "In the same sonnet, he 
refers to 'compounds strange' and the word compounds is a known 
reference to drugs," he said.

"But I think Shakespeare, who may have experimented with these 
substances, is saying that he would rather turn away from them.

"I would not read it as an endorsement of drug use."

The pipe fragments were examined using gas chromatography with the 
help of his co-author, Inspector Tommie van der Merwe of the South 
African Police Service's Forensic Science Laboratory.

They were loaned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which took 
issue with the slur on the playwright's moral rectitude.

"People love to come up with reasons for saying Shakespeare was not a 
genius," Ann Donnelly, the curator, said.

However, she said that their specimens were not of sufficient quality 
to prove the point either way.

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