The sonnets and plays of William Shakespeare are arguably some of the most inspirational in the world, but when the Bard needed inspiration of his own he turned to marijuana seeds.

When you think of people associated with marijuana seeds, the world’s top playwright doesn’t ordinarily spring to mind. However, after a re-reading of sonnet 76, a South African research team decided to carry out tests on a series of pipes found in the garden of Shakespeare’s cottage in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The pipes were found to contain a strange compound of cannabis, tobacco and cocaine. This heady mixture may be the substance that Shakespeare refers to in sonnet 76 when he talks of compounds strange and taking inspiration from a noted weed.

These references don’t necessarily refer to the by-products of marijuana seeds and noted weed could also mean the paper or poetry of others. Likewise, the term compounds strange could also refer to unusual grammar. However, experts have concluded that it is more likely that the Bard is referring to cannabis than either of these alternatives. In sonnet 76, Shakespeare is frustrated with the repetitiveness of his poetry and looking for new inspiration. He considers getting this inspiration from drugs, but then decides against it (the poet does not ‘glance aside’).

Sonnet 27 is also said to refer to the poet’s drug use as it talks about a journey beginning in his head. You may wonder why Shakespeare used so many coded references to cannabis in his sonnets and didn’t just mention the drug. However, if Shakespeare had made explicit references to the hallucinogenic by-products of marijuana seeds then he would have been tried for witchcraft, which would have led to the burning of his books. Cannabis had been banned by the Catholic Church, 80 years before Shakespeare’s birth and those found using it for healing or enjoyment were tortured by the Church.

The findings from the pipes found in Shakespeare’s garden have angered those in academic circles. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which offered up the pipe fragments for the study, said that the conclusions were regrettable as they try to suggest that Shakespeare was not a genius, but rather someone who produced his workings under an artificial influence.

However, using marijuana seeds to uncover under-lying inspiration is certainly nothing new in the world of literature. Francois Rabelais, who died about ten years before the birth of William Shakespeare, made many cryptic references to cannabis. His book, Pantagruel, describes the drug as the herb Pantagruelion, a term used to escape persecution from the Church. For a long time the book was banned from the Catholic Church and in many modern versions of the book the coded references to marijuana seeds are omitted.

Even hundreds of years after the death of Shakespeare, poets continued to extol the virtues of marijuana seeds. Lewis Carroll made numerous references to pot-smoking in Alice in Wonderland, with a pot-smoking caterpillar as one of the main characters. W B Yeats was a member of the 19th century Hashish Club, an elite club of Bohemian intellectuals who gathered in Paris to smoke pot. Fellow members included Charles Baudelaire, Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo and fellow poet Arthur Symons.

These are just a few examples of some fellow poets and playwrights who turned to cannabis for inspiration. Some academics may argue that uncovering these geniuses as pot-smokers will undermine their true writing ability. However, there are now estimated to be around 8 million pot smokers in the country and, as of yet, not one has managed to produce anything to rival the work of Britain’s greatest playwright.