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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