Michael Fassbender plays the lead role in the new big screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." (Photo : YouTube)
William Shakespeare, history's most celebrated playwright and novelist, could be under the influence of cocaine and cannabis while inking his timeless poems and dramas, scientists concluded after studying a 400-year-old pipe taken from his garden.
Residues from fragments of early 17th-century earthenware uncovered from the playwright's garden and elsewhere in Stratford-Upon-Avon were examined in Pretoria, TIME reported.
The study considered 24 fragments of pipe from the "Hamlet" writer's birthplace and University of Witwatersrand. The relics underwent gas chromatography mass spectrometry, Bloomberg reported.
The advance forensic technique revealed that eight samples were positive of cannabis, four of which hailed from the "McBeth" author's property. There were also traces of cocaine in the two pipes, but neither of them came from the poet's garden.
The South African research group was led by anthropologist Francis Thackeray of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The results were released in the South African Journal of Science.
The findings were no news to the Shakespearean scholars who have long claimed that Shakespearean writings exude feelings brought out by the influence of chemicals.
Shakespearean writings often revolve around a series of desperate occurrences. "Romeo and Juliet" ended up with suicide while "King Lear" ended up with insanity and death.
The lines of "Sonnet 76" include "invention in a noted weed". In this line, Shakespeare calls his writings as a product of his experience with weed, chemical scientists claim.
In the same sonnet, Shakespeare also stated that he is not in favor of "compounds strange" which could mean laboratory drugs.
The research encourages literary analyst and chemical scientist to come together and work towards a deeper understanding of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
