If you’ve ever read Act 3, Scene 1 of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” you may have asked yourself, “Was this guy high?” Good news—you’re not *completely* alone.
It comes from a study published in 2001, in which South African anthropologist Francis Thackeray and his team used technology from a narcotics crime lab on some tobacco pipes found in and around the bard’s backyard at Stratford-upon-Avon.
Remnants of tobacco, camphor, cocaine, and a kind of hallucinogenic nutmeg were also discovered at Stratford-upon-Avon, but these were not found on the bard’s property.
His wife might have enjoyed lighting up after a long day, or some local kids could have thrown the pipes over the fence after using them.
The backlash was so strong that Thackeray was publishing articles in defense of his research more than a decade after it was first published.
But it’s not impossible that the bard enjoyed some bud from time to time.
This one is more far-fetched, but the idea is clear: after a day of physical labor, Shakespeare escapes to his mind-palace.
Shakespeare was, after all, a poet, so these interpretations of his work might be reading the text far too literally.
It’s a fun thought, and there’s enough meat to it to have kept academics arguing for over a decade.