Did Marijuana Fuel Shakespeare's Genius?

Question

It seems the great Bard was high on Grass when he composed this sonnet!! PCP or LSD??

**
SONNET 76

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
**

Hold your horses!
This is not a new suspicion about the bard's drug use. No one is suggesting that drugs enhance brilliance.
However to add to Maurice's list below, the great thinker, Walter Benjamin praised hashish and wrote a best -seller with that title. His equally famous classmate at Frankfurt school, Ernst Joel, loved narcotics. The iconic Charles Baudelaire (Benjamin's mentor), viewed loved drug-induced "alternative experiences" as "profane illuminations" and gateways to inner-worldly experience. Aldous Huxley and Thomas de Quincey used drugs "to enhance their creative powers." For Timothy Leary, the "magic of intoxicants" ensured he overcame the limitations of the self by "pulverizing, Dionysian ego-transcending influences."
Hence, let's be cautious in our moral judgments.
Suppose it was proven to you that Dear Willy is a genius, thanks to doing drugs!! What'd be next??

http://shakespeare.about.com/od/shakespearesbiograph1/a/shkMarijuana.htm

Answer 1

If he had been on marijuana when he wrote this, I don't think he would have been able to conduct such a subtle reflection on the Petrarchan rhetoric of love ("old words") and on the Classical notion of "inventio". "Spending again what is already spent" is a way of saying that he is writing in the old-fashioned Petrarchan style, but in his own manner, renewing old topoï with new ideas, "as the sun is daily new and old".

EDIT: Ari, as somebody else pointed out, the reference to "weed" in the poem has nothing to do with drugs. I am not a bardolator, and anything that is discovered about Shakespeare, however negative, does not embarrass me in the least, but as a 17th century specialist, I feel that there are not enough elements on this particular point. Yet. Baudelaire and Benjamin, right, but we are talking 19th and 20th C there.

Answer 2

Oooh, for the final term of my degree I took a Shakespeare module and this question came up quite a lot, because we were dealing with the myths and problems surrounding Shakespeare and I just had to add this little bit of information to the discussion. Did you know that the term 'genius' was first applied to Shakespeare way back in 1712 by a critic called John Dennis? The term genius didn't originally mean what we think today; it was a word made up to account for what was strange and peculiar about Shakespeare's writing. So in fact, even though I love Shakespeare and think he was fantastic, according to Dennis you could indeed say he was overrated due to the fact that 'genius' was describing his weaknesses and flaws. Also, another critic, Samuel Johnson, argued that: 'The Great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients.' So according to Johnson, we only look back at Shakespeare as being wonderful and intelligent because we are far more ready to give praise to the dead than we are to writers living today. So I think Johnson would say that he was overrated in the sense that we only praise him because he has died. Personally, I do think Shakespeare was a genius and I do disagree with a lot of the critics - he wrote some of the most fantastic drama (eg Richard III, my personal favourite) and if it weren't for him theatre today wouldn't be the same. But it's interesting to weigh up both sides of the question you're asking, because it's a question that has been provoking a lot of debate for centuries. And... I've waffled. Sorry!

Answer 3

I think every great thinker was spurred on by open-mindedness of smoking marijuana. I could list a few examples. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and the list goes on and on.

Answer 4

I don't know as centuries change the name for things change too what could have been weed back then might be something else. But if he was getting high then oh well.LOL But um hey im sure they had it back then and bet it was n't illgeal either that lucky duck.LOL

Answer 5

The "weed" referred to here means clothing.

"And keep invention in a noted weed" = keep my writing in the famous clothes (or costume)
"that every word doth almost tell my name" = every word is like all the other words that made me famous

Answer 6

"Compounds strange" refers to language - arranging words in unusual ways so that his poetry sounds different from last time.

"Weed" refers to clothes - his verse looks the same as it always does.

This poem is about how he can't seem to write on any subject except his beloved, not about drug use.

Answer 7

..No...I think Shakespeare fueled Shakespeare's genius. Which I, personally, did not see in all of his works, so much as I did some of them.

...and if you think he was on grass... what do those other two drugs have to do with the question?

some information I found:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/highinamerica.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/special/goode/mjsmokers.htm

Answer 8

no that is completly wrong assumption,it has nothing to do in fueling ones genius,it actually kills brain cell...genius is ones own abilities and not induced by some sort of drug,that is a reason to smoke marijuana...read info of the effects of marijuana and you will be shocked on how destructive it is to your body !.good luck to you.

Answer 9

grass is not conducive to intelligent prose. nor are any mind altering chemicals...it is merely one' own ego that would cause one to think otherwise