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?
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 76
Do you ever picture Shakespeare writing in his apartment, quill in one hand, struggling to find the right words, and maybe taking a break, walking around for some water, and then a puff of some illicit substance for inspiration? Well, it turns out that there is some evidence showing that Shakespeare may have smoked cannabis.
Back in 2001 a South African Back in 2001, a South African anthropologist named Francis Thackeray used tech from a narcotics crime lab to analyze the substances that the bard may have smoked in the 400-year-old pipe fragments unearthed in Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon garden. He found residues of nicotine and cocaine, likely from Peruvian coca leaves. Four of the pipes contained traces of cannabis.
Okay, so it’s a weak connection. James Shapiro of Columbia University thinks the interpretation is dubious at best. “We don’t know what Shakespeare did or didn’t do. Just because these pipes were found in his garden doesn’t mean his neighbor kid didn’t throw the pipes over the fence. There are a million possible explanations,” he said.
Still, the 16th century was a Golden Age of a lot of things – choral music, portraiture, Armada victories – and also hemp cultivation. So we know the plant was available.
In 1533, Henry VIII passed a law making hemp cultivation mandatory. For every 60 acres, farmers had to set aside one rood (about 1/4 acre) for flax or hemp. Otherwise, they’d face a fine of three shillings and four pence – about half a year’s wage for a household servant – for breaking the law.
The hemp was needed to make more rope, sails, nets and other naval equipment – this was part of his buildup of the Tudor Navy, and the isolation from the rest of Europe thanks to his argument with the Pope. Henry was building one of Europe’s most badass navies to defeat any Spanish threat – something his daughter would fulfill on in 1588. Elizabeth ordered farmers to grow even more hemp. It all paid off, though.
Okay, so we might not have conclusive evidence either way, but he did have the means and opportunity, and likely the motive – he was, after all, a curious fellow. So who knows, really, but it’s an interesting thought experiment.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.