- Author: Launa Herrmann
Looks like Shakespeare grew more than English roses and culinary herbs in his 17th century garden. As he leisurely strolled through the flowerbeds, stopping to sit awhile on a wooden bench, he couldn't begin to imagine that centuries later someone would come along to unearth the evidence he was leaving behind.
Among the plants mentioned in Shakespeare's writings — roses, columbines, daisies, violets and fennel along with “pansies for thought” and “rosemary for remembrance” — were New World cultivars brought back from North and South America. At this time in Elizabethan England, tobacco was trendy. Introduced to Europe by Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, it was smoked in clay pipes. Raleigh had discovered Nicotiana (hence nicotine) in Virginia while Drake's voyage to Peru had yielded coca leaves, “the henbane of Peru, akin to cocaine (Erythroxylum).
The July/August 2015 edition of the South African Journal of Science (Volume 111/Number 7/8) published the results of a forensic study that examined pipe bowls and stems excavated from William Shakespeare's garden. At the South African Police Narcotics Laboratory, a gas chromatography mass spectrometry was used to chemically analyze the residue within the pipe fragments. Cannabis was found in eight out of 24 samples, with nicotine in at least one sample and Peruvian cocaine in two samples.
What is intriguing is that four of the pipes specifically discovered in Shakespeare's garden contained cannabis residue. Also, William himself intimates in Sonnet 76 that Cannabis, or Marijuana as we commonly know the plant today, aided his ability to write. According to the above article, Shakespeare writes “invention in a noted weed,” with the word invention interpreted to mean creative writing and weed interpreted to mean cannabis.
Guess it goes to show that the wise ancient King Solomon was right: “There's nothing new under the sun.”