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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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South Africa: Poetic pipe dreams
Jon Penn The Mercury, SA
Wednesday 15 Mar 2006 The Ides of March is upon us. On this day in 44 BC Julius Caesar suffered a backstabbing and with his last breath gasped: "Tee hee, Brutus." So says a famous schoolboy exam blooper, anyway. But it could be that William Shakespeare, not the schoolboy, got it wrong when he reported Caesar as having said: "Et tu, Brute?", because apparently the Bard might have been stoned on dagga or cocaine when he wrote his play. The possibility was raised in a feature in The Mercury on Monday which recalled that tests on 17th century pipes found in Shakespeare's garden showed up traces of cocaine. The article didn't say so, but the scientists who did those tests were led by a South African, Dr Francis Thackeray, and their paper was published five years ago by the South African Journal of Science. It said that remnants of cannabis and other hallucinogens were found in the pipes. Thackeray said there was "suggestive evidence" in Shakespeare's writing - for example in Sonnet 76, which refers to a "noted weed". So perhaps Shakespeare was confused when he wrote his plays Midsummer Night's Zol, Peddler of Venice and Julius Raver. Or perhaps Thackeray was pushing his luck and "weed" was just an old word for clothing. But we do know for sure that William liked a couple of pints, with or without a pipe. I have a very old book on him by another poet and author, Victor Hugo, which records that Shakespeare wrote his first quatrain "being tipsy" in the open air, under an apple tree. While in "this drunken fit" he decided that Anne Hathaway was a pretty girl, even if she was eight years older than him. After marrying her he became a teacher, a clerk and then a poacher. He went to London and spent most of his time in ale houses composing his work on scraps of paper. It may be that one day a scrap will be found from his play Twelfth Light, saying: If marijuana be the food of love, puff on, Give me excess of it that, smoking, The senses may thicken and get high . . . .
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