BARD WITH A BONG? REPUTATION TAKES A HIT

Doobie or not doobie. That is the question that has Shakespeare scholars
all hopped up. A South African professor claims that the Bard's vivid
imagination was stoked by cannabis, according to The Independent newspaper
in Britain. Paleontologist Frances Thackeray discussed the "potential link
between Shakespeare and hallucinogenic stimuli" in a paper for the
Shakespearean Society of Southern Africa. "Close reading of his sonnets and
some other lines suggests that he was aware of them and may have
experienced the effects himself," Thackeray wrote. He and colleague Nick
van der Merwe asked Pretoria police labs to analyze the contents of clay
pipes retrieved from Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England