Smoking pipes excavated from Shakespeare’s home contained traces of tobacco, suggestive evidence of cannabis and, most surprising, signs of cocaine
Shaun Smillie
William Shakespeare or at least his contemporaries were doing cocaine, dabbling with dagga and experimenting with a range of drugs that would impress even the most desperate of junkies.
These are findings of the police forensic science laboratory in Pretoria, which conducted chemical analysis of several English 17th-century clay smoking pipes that included specimens found on the site of Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The 24 pipes contained traces of tobacco, suggestive evidence of cannabis and, most surprising, two of the pipes sampled showed signs of cocaine.
“I was most surprised with the findings. I thought that we would find tobacco and possibly cannabis,” says Dr Francis Thackeray, a palaeontologist at the Transvaal Museum.
“There were very low concentrations of cannabis. Our findings wouldn’t stand up in a court of law if it was a criminal case, but for research purposes we can say that there was cannabis smoked in those pipes,” says Inspector Tommy van der Merwe of the police’s forensic science laboratory.
Unfortunately, cannabis is known to degrade after a short period of time and can be affected by heat.
However, there was no doubt about the traces of cocaine.
“The pipes that showed signs of cocaine still had dirt and sediment in them that preserved the residue inside the pipe. It meant that there was unlikely to be have been any contamination and the readings we got were the same as if we had analysed a crack pipe,” says Van der Merwe.
One of the cocaine pipes came from Harvard House in Stratford-upon-Avon, the home of the mother of John Harvard, after whom Harvard University is named.
The findings, particularly the use of cocaine, are likely to cause a stir in the academic world.
Cocaine came into existence only in 1855, but the drug is derived from the South American coca leaf, which some historians believe was introduced to Europe in the 16th century, after the Spanish conquest of Peru.
“I am sceptical about the early use of coca. There seems little evidence that it was exported from South America; the Spanish were aware of it and used it in their mining operations there. However, evidence for its European use comes much later,” says Daniel Bradburb, professor of social sciences at Clarkson University in Potsdam, United States.
The apparent first independent mention of coca in English literature was after Shakespeare’s time, in 1662 in Abraham Cowley’s poem A Legend of Coca.
Some believe, however, that English seafarers like Sir Francis Drake, a contemporary of Shakespeare, introduced the coca leaf to England after they had seized the drug from Spanish galleons returning from Peru.
Cannabis, on the other hand, had been known to English society long before Shakespeare’s time and in fact was the force behind the Elizabethan navy.
“Queen Elizabeth had made it law that any piece of land that was bigger than 60ha had to be used to grow cannabis, which was used to make the sails for her fleet,” explains Thackeray. It was also being used for the manufacture of rope and clothes.
However, more puzzling substances were also found in the pipes, including traces of camphor and myristic acid. Thackeray believes he might have an explanation.
“Myristic acid, which is found in the common cooking ingredient nutmeg, has hallucinogenic properties and camphor perhaps was used to hide the smell of tobacco or other substances. In Elizabethan England the smell of tobacco smoke was frowned on,” says Thackeray.
A menthol cigarette of the 17th century?
But a substance found in the bowl of one of the pipes is a little more difficult to explain.
“We have found traces of quinoline, which contains quinine. This also comes from South America and is used in the cure of malaria but has no known hallucinogenic properties. Perhaps what was happening was that Elizabethans were experimenting with various drugs that were brought to England through exploration and new trade,” Thackeray suggests.
Thackeray’s suspicions that the Bard was perhaps getting goofed on grass arose when he came across a reference to the “noted weed” in his Sonnet 76.
To substantiate his theory he enlisted the help of Professor Nikolaas van der Merwe of Harvard University and contacted the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, which made available 24 pipe fragments for chemical analysis.
A number of these pipes had been excavated from Shakespeare’s home, New Place, and several showed traces of cannabis.
“We must stress that we can’t say that Shakespeare smoked these pipes. All we know is that these substances were being smoked or were available during his time,” says Thackeray.
In further interpreting Sonnet 76, Thackeray has come to the conclusion that the Bard perhaps preferred cannabis and was averse to the use of stronger, more dangerous drugs that he refers to in the poem as “strange compounds”.
But if Shakespeare or at least his contemporaries were using cannabis or coca why wasn’t he more open about it in his works?
In all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems there isn’t even a reference to tobacco.
Several academics suggest that Shakespeare was being politically correct. His king, James 1, was one of the first anti-tobacconists.
“In his time the use of hallucinogenic drugs might have been associated with witchcraft,” suggests Thackeray.
But perhaps he did make reference to drug use in one of his works. A play, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, some believe was written or part written by Shakespeare. In the play is a line that reads “more chargeable than cane tobacco”.
“This could refer to tobacco rolled up as a cigar, or something more chargeable, more powerful, than tobacco. What that was I don’t even want to wager a guess,” says Thackeray.
There are plans to analyse more English pipes and as a local spin-off South African pipes will also soon be under scrutiny, when the police forensic science lab examines their contents to find out what South Africans were smoking over the past couple of centuries.