Change of pace...William Shakespeare, bong sucking DOPE FIEND!!!

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Bard goes for a bong

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE could have been stoned on pot when he wrote his plays.

Scientists have found clay pipes at the playwright's home in Stratford-upon-Avon which they believe carry traces of cannabis.

The pipes have been sent to the USA for tests.

One expert claims Shakespeare's plays and sonnets - which carry references to "darkness and mental journeys" - show he was doped to the eyeballs on drugs.

Dr Frances Thackeray, who lives in South Africa, said: "A close reading suggests he was aware of them. He may have experienced the effects himself."

But Warwick University English prof Ronnie Mulryne scoffed: "Cannabis does not turn ordinary mortals into geniuses."

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I'm not sure that they should have the pipes tested here in USA, the anti-drug zealots might "lose" the results.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), November 07, 2000

Answers

A pothead by any other name, etc..

-- Don't bogart that bard my friend (@ .), November 07, 2000.

So that's why I could never make out WTF the guy was trying to say in all those works he wrote! And all this time I thought it was my reading comprehension!

-- Bingo1 (howe9@shentel.net), November 07, 2000.

If 'tis done, when 'tis done, 'tis best 'twere done quickly.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), November 07, 2000.

And here I thought this whole time Billy was jez a dirty ol MAN!

"speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you....(gurgle...gurgle....gurgle)[talk while holding breath] trippingly on the ..... tongue.... (whooOOOOOoooooo....)...

but if you mouth the words, as so many of your players do.....(gurgle ....gurgle....gurgle)[TWHB].....I'd have leaf the town cryer spoke my words!!!.....(whooOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo.....)

-- Billy Trippin' (Oneismywest indies,theotherismyeast@nd.I shall *trade* with them!), November 07, 2000.


Seemed pretty lucid to moi Bingo,guess it is just a state of mind : )

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), November 07, 2000.


The big question is whether he actually composed the plays at all.No actual copies of the plays written by the Bard exist.All have been put together from the remberances of the original actors.

-- Chris (chris@griffenmill.com), November 07, 2000.

But Warwick University English prof Ronnie Mulryne scoffed: "Cannabis does not turn ordinary mortals into geniuses."

Damn!!! Who'd of thunk? ^^^^

Hey, wonder IF when the pipes get here, they will be on display? :-)

hee hee

-- consumer (shh@aol.com), November 07, 2000.


I think y'all would be surprised by the variety and amounts of drug use in famous people in history. I seem to remember Sherlock Holmes being an opium fan. Of course y'all thought this stuff was new to YOUR generation, eh?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), November 07, 2000.

Anita,

Coleridge too, unfortunately it got the better of him.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), November 07, 2000.


Let's not forget that coke fiend Freud.

-- flora (***@__._), November 07, 2000.


>> No actual copies of the plays written by the Bard exist. All have been put together from the remberances of the original actors. <<

While no handwritten mss. exist, most of the texts are derived from quartos published soon after the play was produced. These texts are thought to have been pirated from a variety of sources. Booksellers were none too scrupulous about such matters. They would buy a copy off an actor (or a thief) or send an expert at taking shorthand to the playhouse with pens and paper to sit in the audience and write a crib.

Those plays for which no quartos survive take their texts from the folios printed by friends after his death. Printing a folio edition of a playwright's work was an extraordinary tribute to him and totally unprecedented at the time. It would be like printing a "coffee table book" of his plays in an age when a personal library of 50 books was considered huge and most printed plays were the equivalent of cheap paperbacks.

We have Ben Jonson's word for it that Shakespeare wrote the plays. In fact, no other Elizabethan playwright's plays are questioned as to authorship in the way Shakespeare's are, despite the fact that he is as well attested as any of them.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), November 07, 2000.


and not just pot!--VINCENTIO, from The Taming of the Shrew

[Seeing BIONDELLO]

Come hither, crack-hemp.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), November 07, 2000.


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