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John Taylor was a poet, a contemporary of Shakespeare. His poem “The Praise of Hempseed” was published in 1620. It refers to many uses of hemp (Cannabis), including paper and clothing. It is probable that hemp was smoked and that such practice was undertaken furtively on account of disapproval from the Church which associated “tobacco” with non-Christian shamanism (cf. witchcraft) in countries such as India (source of Cannabis) and America (source of Nicotiana, American tobacco). Writing explicitly about Cannabis was associated with the risk of books being burnt at the instruction of a literary censor. Taylor’s poetry is assessed with reference to the Shakespeare-Hemp-Cannabis Hypothesis (Thackeray, 2022), formulated as follows: “William Shakespeare discreetly smoked stigmatised Cannabis/hemp/weed (with a moderate degree of mind-stimulating THC), associated with a source of inspiration for creative writing (“invention in a noted weed” in cryptic wordplay in Sonnet 76), constituting a “Tenth Muse” which “gives invention light” (Sonnet 38) to supplement the nine muses known to the Greeks”. |
