DID SHAKESPEARE SMOKE COCAINE?

JOHANNESBURG - Was William Shakespeare partial to a good deal more than a
pinch of tobacco while composing his sonnets?

While there is no proof the bard delved into narcotics, clay pipe fragments
excavated from his Stratford-upon-Avon home and of the 17th century period
show conclusively that cocaine and myristic acid - a hallucinogenic derived
from plants, including nutmeg - were smoked in Shakespeare's England. The
findings, published in the South African Journal of Science, also show
hints of residues of cannabis or marijuana, but this has not been proven.
Nicotine, unsurprisingly, was one of the compounds firmly identified. "The
cocaine was found in two of the 24 pipe fragments examined, which is really
quite remarkable," Francis Thackeray, a palaeontologist at the Transvaal
Museum in Pretoria who co-write the article, told Reuters. "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. It is quite a find," said Thackeray,
who is a distant relative of the the famous 19th century English author.

The fragments, which were lent to Thackeray by the Shakespeare Birthplace
Trust, were examined with the help of Inspector Tommie van der Merwe of the
South African Police Service's Forensic Science Laboratory. The findings
are certain to spark tantalizing speculation that England's favorite writer
may have been inspired to write his enduring classics while under the
influence of substances associated with bohemian authors of the 20th century.

"There is some suggestive evidence in Shakespeare's own writing," said
Thackeray. "In sonnet 76 he refers to 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 he would rather turn away from them. I would not read it as an
endorsement of drug use," he said.