According to LiveScience, a South African anthropologist wants to open the grave of William Shakespeare in order to discover, among other things, whether the world’s greatest writer smoked pot.
I didn’t know this, but apparently cannabis was widely available in Elizabethan England; it was used mainly for making rope. If Shakespeare smoked marijuana, traces of it would be found in whatever hair, fingernails or toenails might remain, according to Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Actually disturbing the bones of the playwright won’t be necessary:
…The team plans to use a technique called laser surface scanning. With a portable device, (Thackeray) said, the anthropologists can open the graves and digitally scan the skeletons of buried in the graves that are supposed to belong to Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway and his daughter Susanna without moving the bones. The scans could then be turned into three-dimensional computer models of the bones and skulls. From this information, the researchers can build facial reconstructions to confirm the skeletons’ identities and look for markers of health and signs of disease in the bones.
That’s good because Shakespeare would not have taken kindly to having his bones tampered with, according to a curse from the Bard himself engraved on the tomb:
Good Friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.