Drugs Found Near Shakespeare's House By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Several 17th Century clay pipes found near the home of William Shakespeare contained a hallucinogenic substance and several others may have been used to smoke marijuana, South African scientists said Thursday. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, allowed the researchers to perform a chemical analysis on 24 pipe fragments at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Pretoria. The results showed traces of tobacco, camphor and myristic acid, which has hallucinogenic properties.

"We do not claim that any of the pipes belonged to Shakespeare himself. However, we do know that some of the pipes come from the area in which he lived, and they date to the 17th century," said Francis Thackeray, of the Transvaal Museum, one of the researchers in the project. "The results suggest that at least one hallucinogenic substance was accessible to Shakespeare and his contemporaries at a time when smoking was a novelty in England."

Though marijuana degrades over time and it is difficult to identify it with much certainty after many centuries, eight of the 24 pipe fragments analyzed showed signs suggestive of marijuana, the scientists said.

The use of drugs in Shakespeare's time may have inspired his "Sonnet 76," in which he refers to a "noted weed" and "compounds strange," Thackeray said.

Sonette 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. "

Literary critics have interpreted "noted weed" to mean a well known garment or style of dress and "compounds strange" to mean a strange word construction or a medicinal mixture.

Two of the pipe samples also showed evidence of cocaine.

One of those pipes came from the home of the mother of John Harvard, after whom Harvard University is named.

The results of the study have been published in the South African Journal of Science.

Alchemind.org: Pipes Show Cocaine [and other psychoactive substances] Smoked in Shakespeare's England

All of Shakespeare's sonettes - ShakeSpeareSearch - Puff, the magic bard