The New Yorker's Shakespeare Pen Is Smokin'

Feeling fine, Fiennes. Hm? The New Yorker has found Shakespeare's lost weed sonnets? Something like that. They quote The Telegraph: "South African scientists have discovered that 400-year-old tobacco pipes excavated from the garden of William Shakespeare contained cannabis, suggesting the playwright might have written some of his famous works while high." In addition, as we made mention of earlier this week:

Residue from early 17th century clay pipes found in the playwright’s garden, and elsewhere in Stratford-Upon-Avon, were analysed in Pretoria using a sophisticated technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, the Independent reports.

Of the 24 fragments of pipe loaned from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to University of the Witwatersrand, cannabis was found in eight samples, four of which came from Shakespeare's property.

There was also evidence of cocaine in two pipes, but neither of them hailed from the playwright's garden.
Shakespeare's sonnets suggest he was familiar with the effects of both drugs.

And lucky for us, The New Yorker has hard evidence, in the forms of Sonnet 156, 157, and 158. "That even the sun god himself says, 'Whoa.' / (And I’m not being allegorical.) / Call thou the strain Twelfth Night, or what you will...." Whoa.