Shakespeare may have been a cannabis user

English wordsmith William Shakespeare penned 154 sonnets and 38 plays in his 54 years – and we now know he was probably high AF the entire time, after tobacco pipes unearthed in his former garden tested positive for cannabis.

South African scientists conducted a chemical analysis of pieces of broken pipes found in Shakespeare’s garden in in Stratford-upon-Avon, finding cannabis on four pipes.

William Shakespeare is renowned the world over for a large number of masterpieces. According to the report by the Independent, 400-year old pipe bowls and stems that were dug up from the legendary playwright’s garden were analyzed using a forensic technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry.

Twenty-four fragments were founded in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The Telegraph reports that marijuana residue was discovered in the 17th century pipes. In 2001, researchers analysing the same pipes claimed to have found traces of cocaine and hallucinogenic drugs.

Now experts suggest that the Bard might have been out of his gourd when he wrote his plays.

He assessed 24 of these pipes and found traces of cannabis in eight samples – and Peruvian cocaine in two. As he himself implies in Sonnet 76: “Invention in a noted weed”, yes. Sir Francis Drake is believed to be the first to bring coca leaves to England after a visit to Peru, and Sir Walter Raleigh introduced England to “tobacco leaves” from Virginia. Nonetheless, this is another substance that he was speculated to have at least tried, and maybe didn’t enjoy, as he wrote in the same sonnet that he would rather not be associated with “compounds strange”, or “strange drugs“, which has been theorised as cocaine.