An Archaeologist Wants to Exhume Shakespeare to Check if He Smoked Pot
BAD IDEAS FROM SMART PEOPLE
South African archaeologist Francis Thackeray wants the world to know that he thinks William Shakespeare was a pot head. Based on “trace evidence of marijuana in pipe fragments found in what had once been Shakespeare’s garden,” Thackeray posits that Shakespeare wrote some of the most famous works in history while higher than a kite. To prove it, he wants to exhume the body. The body that’s been decaying in the ground for the past four hundred years. Yeah.
Thackeray insists that if he and his team were able to find any of the Bard’s hair or nail fragments left, they would be able to determine whether there were even highly minute quantities of cannabis.
There’s also this other little tiny barrier, however: On the inscription of Shakespeare’s grave it says (emphasis ours):
Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed be he who moves my bones.
Do you really want to mess with that? Do you really want your life to turn into the next Shakespearean tragedy because you messed with the Bard’s final wishes?
But really? Realllly? Will it really make much difference if we “know” that Shakespeare wrote so many classics while…under the influence? All that will do is make for some very interesting arguments between parents and children when they get caught with weed. “From Shakespeare I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING SHAKESPEARE.”
For now, however, the man may rest in peace. The decision lies in the hands of the Church of England, and so far they haven’t even acknowledged that they’ve received Thackeray’s application.
(via i09)
(Photo via The Guardian)
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