William Shakespeare was successful information of being canceled. He was a large instrumentality of mind-altering drugs—especially cannabis. But the Church of England looked down connected unrecorded theatre due to the fact that of its “unwholesome” motivation contented and was keeping an oculus retired for plays to unopen down; plus, metropolis officials had to o.k. plays earlier they could beryllium performed wrong the metropolis limits. So, if Shakespeare had dared to admit publically that helium smoked cannabis, it mightiness person ended his career.
That’s right, Shakespeare was a stoner. I’m not making this up—they recovered the grounds successful his backyard. Back successful 2001, immoderate anthropologists got support from a depository to get twenty-four clay tube fragments that had been dug up successful the tiny municipality of Stratford-upon-Avon, wherever Shakespeare utilized to live. Using state-of-the-art forensic technology, the anthropologists discovered cannabis residue connected 8 of them—including respective from Shakespeare’s backyard garden—that dated backmost to the precocious 1500s/early 1600s, astir the clip helium really lived there.
If Shakespeare had dared to admit publically that helium smoked cannabis, it mightiness person ended his career.
Professor Francis Thackeray has written extensively astir the findings. This feline is legit: he’s got a PhD from Yale University, and helium personally participated successful the forensic tests. He says they besides found traces of coca leaves (that’s wherever cocaine comes from) and myristic acerb (a hallucinogenic cause derived from nutmeg) connected some of the tube fragments. Unlike the cannabis residue, however, the coca leaves and myristic acerb weren’t recovered straight successful Shakespeare’s garden (although they were recovered nearby)—but it opens the door to the tantalizing anticipation that Shakespeare mightiness person been into all sorts of mind-altering drugs.
Technically, the grounds is circumstantial. Pipes with cannabis residue were dug up successful Shakespeare’s garden, but that doesn’t needfully mean Shakespeare is the 1 who enactment them there. (Hey, possibly they were planted successful his plot by Sir Francis Bacon, right?) So Professor Thackeray, being a astute and thorough scientist, decided to get conclusive proof. He asked the Church of England for support to exhume Shakespeare’s corpse and tally the indispensable tests successful bid to answer, erstwhile and for all, the question of whether Shakespeare smoked pot. Guess what the religion said. No way, not a chance, that’s not a question they privation answered.
But if Shakespeare was a stoner, helium faced a thorny dilemma. On the 1 hand, helium enjoyed utilizing drugs and wanted to see depictions of cause usage successful his plays. On the different hand, helium didn’t privation the religion to prohibition his plays for immoral content. So however did the top writer of each clip resoluteness this dilemma?
The reply is helium wrote astir drugs, but without saying what they truly were. His plays are filled with characters who ingest each mode of fantastical pharmaceutical concoctions. For example, successful A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon, the king of the fairies, tells Puck to fetch an exotic magical angiosperm truthful that helium tin extract its foodstuff to formulate a emotion potion—but it’s beauteous evidently opium. We cognize for a information that Shakespeare was acquainted with opium due to the fact that helium says arsenic overmuch successful Othello (emphasis added):
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor each the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that saccharine sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
Similarly, successful Romeo and Juliet, the young heroine, Juliet, is distraught due to the fact that her parents are forcing her to wed idiosyncratic different than Romeo. She begs the affable Friar Laurence to help, and what’s his genius idea? That she portion a sleeping potion that volition sound her retired truthful wholly and convincingly that the full satellite volition judge she’s dormant for 2 days. Juliet really takes his creepy advice. Basically, she roofies herself—Shakespeare mightiness conscionable arsenic good person been talking astir GHB.
But the information that Shakespeare wrote astir emotion potions, sleeping potions, and different fanciful elixirs isn’t conclusive evidence. It’s the quality of melodramatic storytelling: writers invent peculiar concoctions to springiness their characters a crushed to enactment successful ways they wouldn’t usually act. That doesn’t beryllium Shakespeare was a cause user. You tin scour done each azygous 1 of his plays looking for passages that mightiness or mightiness not notation to drugs, but you won’t find a Da Vinci Code-like secret that unlocks a hidden drawer containing a signed confession from William Shakespeare admitting that helium smoked cannabis.
Although 1 of the sonnets helium wrote comes beauteous close. Professor Thackeray, the aforesaid anthropologist who performed the tube analysis, points to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76, which talks successful portion astir the enactment of penning (emphasis added):
Why is my verse truthful barren of caller pride,
So acold from saltation oregon speedy change?
Why with the clip bash I not glimpse aside
To newfound methods and to compounds strange?
Why constitute I inactive each one, ever the same,
And support invention successful a noted weed,
That each connection doth astir archer my name…
The wording successful Sonnet 76 is beauteous convincing. Many scholars judge the “noted weed” successful which the writer finds “invention” is simply a notation to cannabis and its quality to stimulate creativity. Some besides deliberation the operation “every connection doth astir archer my name” is simply a sly notation to the information that “shake” (as successful Shakespeare) is different connection for cannabis—specifically, the scraps near implicit aft cannabis buds person been plucked and packaged.
But what astir “compounds strange”? The sonnet says a writer whose penning has go “barren” could perchance crook “to newfound methods and to compounds strange,” but the writer suggests helium has chosen not to spell that direction. Does that mean Shakespeare wasn’t a cause user? Not necessarily. Professor Thackeray believes the transition could mean Shakespeare utilized cannabis (“a noted weed”) for his originative inspiration, and chose to debar utilizing other, much unsafe drugs, specified arsenic cocaine, due to the fact that they were “compounds strange” that could beryllium harmful.
As you mightiness guess, Shakespeare scholars thin to get a spot antiaircraft erstwhile idiosyncratic starts to suggest that possibly the Bard enjoyed cannabis. They consciousness similar it’s an effort to undercut his achievements—but that isn’t the lawsuit astatine all. I’m not saying if Shakespeare was smoking cookware erstwhile helium wrote Hamlet, it someway makes the play little great—or worse, that anyone who was smoking cookware could person written it. Heck, writers person been utilizing cannabis for 4 100 years since Shakespeare died, and truthful acold nary 1 has managed to travel adjacent to replicating the man’s genius.
To enactment a twist connected 1 of his astir celebrated lines: I travel to praise Shakespeare, not to hide him. He was a uniquely talented writer who told stories successful a compelling and enjoyable way. Basically, helium was the Walt Disney of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Everyone loved his plays. He didn’t constitute lone for kings, queens, nobles, and different snooty affluent people. Sure, they attended his shows and appreciated his work—but his astir enthusiastic fans were the lowly commoners who flocked to the Globe Theatre to inhabit the standing-room-only section. They were known arsenic “groundlings,” and they’d hoot and holler astatine his ribald jokes and raunchy banter. It was astir similar having a mosh pit astatine his plays.
The stories helium told weren’t needfully original. Shakespeare borrowed plotlines from books and adapted folktales from different cultures—Hamlet, for example, is based connected an aged Scandinavian tale. His existent genius laic successful retelling these stories successful a mode that appealed to a overmuch broader assemblage than the archetypal root material—just similar Disney didn’t make the plots of Cinderella, Mulan, and The Little Mermaid, but alternatively took existing root worldly and transformed it into audience-pleasing, world-spanning megahits.
He’s inactive regarded by galore arsenic the top writer who ever lived. If cannabis helped him get there, it doesn’t tarnish his legacy.
His existent acquisition was language: puns, rhymes, clever wordplay, and memorable turns of phrase. If helium were live today, Shakespeare mightiness beryllium a rapper due to the fact that of however easy the words seemed to travel from his mind. Do we person cannabis to convey for that? Maybe, astatine slightest successful part. Many authors (and rappers) person utilized mind-altering drugs to heighten their originative process and boost their productivity—and nary 1 tin contradict that Shakespeare was insanely productive, fixed that helium wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets successful the span of his twenty-three-year career.
In summation to penning plays and sonnets, Shakespeare created words themselves. He’s credited with adding astir 1,700 words to the English-language lexicon. While the full fig is astir apt exaggerated—experts judge immoderate of the words were already being utilized successful mundane speech and Shakespeare was simply the archetypal idiosyncratic to constitute them down—the information remains that helium invented astatine slightest a fewer 100 caller words.
But wait, however were audiences capable to travel what the characters were talking astir if helium kept making up caller words? This was portion of Shakespeare’s genius. Like the plots of his plays, the words helium invented weren’t chopped from full cloth; they were adapted from acquainted root material.
One of his favourite tricks was to instrumentality 2 existing words and articulation them together, arsenic helium did with “barefaced” and “bloodsucking.” At different times, helium took a noun and turned it into a verb (“elbowed”). He changed nouns into adjectives (“catlike”), verbs into adjectives (“revolting”), and verbs into nouns (“excitement”). He besides liked to adhd prefixes, taking words similar “formal” and “educated,” and giving them a twist, creating “informal” and “uneducated.” Or he’d adhd a suffix, creating words similar “disgraceful” and “distrustful.” When each other failed, he’d instrumentality a Latin connection and anglicize it a bit, yielding words similar “tranquil” and “articulate.”
The effect is that Shakespeare’s plays are filled with words that ne'er existed before, and yet their meaning was instantly clear. And yes, a fewer of his caller words dependable similar they mightiness person been invented by idiosyncratic who was precocious astatine the time—words specified arsenic “trippingly” and “moonbeam,” and “zany” and “swagger.” In fact, Shakespeare was the idiosyncratic who archetypal coined the connection “addiction”—but helium besides created the connection “transcendence.”
So did Shakespeare fume cannabis? The technological grounds suggests helium astir apt did, but this doesn’t marque him immoderate little of a genius. He’s inactive regarded by galore arsenic the top writer who ever lived. If cannabis helped him get there, it doesn’t tarnish his legacy. Maybe his existent genius was knowing what worked for him.
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From Human History connected Drugs: An Utterly Scandalous but Entirely Truthful Look at History Under the Influence by Sam Kelly. Copyright © 2025 by Samuel Ezra Kelly. Published by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House, LLC.
