Just what was William Shakespeare smoking? According to South African researchers, marijuana, probably. Using a technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, Francis Thackeray at the University of Witwatersrand found traces of cannabis in four clay pipe fragments unearthed from Shakespeare's garden in Stratford-upon-Avon, as well as in four pipes found nearby.
Though the pipes, or the 24 fragments loaned from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, hadn't been smoked for 400 years, there were also clear traces of cocaine — probably brought back to Elizabethan England from Peru by Sir Francis Drake — in two samples (neither from Shakespeare's garden) and evidence of tobacco in just one sample. In his research letter, Thackeray also dabbled in literary criticism, trying to find evidence of Shakespeare's drugs of choice in Sonnet 76. If you have to get a little stoned to see his point, well, according to Thackeray, you're probably just indulging in the same "noted weed" Shakespeare used when writing it.
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