Edward Tabor
Bethesda, Maryland, United States

Tobacco was used in Elizabethan England to treat diseases and injuries, as well as for relaxation and social interactions. Why, then, did Shakespeare never mention tobacco in any of his plays, or even refer to its use?

Tobacco grew only in the Americas before Columbus’ voyages. When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, they found the natives using tobacco for relaxation, for ceremonies, and to treat illnesses and injuries among themselves and when assisting ill or injured Europeans.¹ A generation later, these medicinal uses of tobacco and other New World plants were carefully studied by Nicolas Monardes (1493–1588), a physician in Seville, Spain.^1,2 He collected medicinal plants brought back from the Spanish colonies of the New World, grew them in his garden,³ and tried to treat the diseases that the natives in the New World treated, as well as other diseases that his patients had. He published these experiences in 1574 in a widely read book that was translated into English as Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde Worlde.^1,2 There were three English editions (1577, 1580, and 1596; the 1596 edition was published after Monardes died¹). All three English editions were published during Shakespeare’s lifetime (1564–1616) and were widely read in England, as evidenced by critiques of Monardes’ work in two English books about tobacco published in 1595⁴ and 1602.⁵ Latin editions in 1582 and 1598 made the book known to physicians of other European countries.¹

New World plant medicines seemed miraculous to people in Europe.¹ Monardes wrote:

… our Occidentall Indias doeth sende unto us many Trees, Plantes, Herbes, Rootes … that are of greate medicinall vertues, in the whiche there bee founde… newe Remedies, wherewith thei doe cure and make whole many infirmities, whiche if wee did lacke them, thei were incurable, and without any remedie …¹

Monardes was particularly impressed by accounts of cures by tobacco. The 141 pages of his book include twenty-four pages advocating the medicinal use of tobacco.⁶ Monardes wrote that tobacco could successfully treat shortness of breath, dropsy, skin ulcers, ringworm, scrofula, venereal disease, knife injury (“to cleanse, incarnate, and knit together all maner [manner] of woundes”) and could be used for antisepsis.¹ Tobacco was administered medically in various ways, including topical application of the juice, chewing the leaves, ingesting little balls made of powdered tobacco mixed with another substance, ingesting a liquid extract of the leaves mixed with another medicinal plant, and inhaling the smoke of the burning tobacco leaves through a piece of cane.¹

Several decades later, English physicians also published books about medical cures from tobacco. William Barclay,⁷ a physician, wrote in 1614 that:

in Tabacco [sic] there is nothing which is not medicin, the root, the stalke, the leaves, the seeds, the smoake, the ashes … either greene or dry, of greene Tabacco may be made Syrups, waters, oyles, unguents, plasters, or the leaf of it selfe, may be used mortified at the fire to cure the asthma, or shortnesse of breath, dissolve obstructions, heale the olde cough, burning ulcers, wounds, migraim [migraine], Colicke … one of the best & surest remedies in the world against Paralisie, epilepsie or apoplexie …

He also described its use for toothache and “sounding in the ears,” arthritis, gout, edema, and even “Hypochondriacke melancholie,” and its use to remove excess “water” from “all the parts of [the] body.”⁷

“Doctor Bellamy,”⁸ an English physician, wrote in 1602 about his experiences with medicinal tobacco. He also described a contentious debate about medicinal tobacco between “singular exquisite learned Physitions, Con and Pro … : The one of them, bitter, invective, and pathetical against it: The other, mild, modest, and apologeticall for it.”⁸ Bellamy described his own experience when he was twelve years old in which tobacco cured a respiratory illness (with hemoptysis and empyema) that had so weakened him that he could not walk, all of which permanently resolved by use of tobacco.⁸ He asserted that it could “draine up all superfluous moisture, be it in the stomach, liver, brain, or even the lungs themselves …,”⁸ stop vomiting, and cause purging. He also wrote that the ashes of tobacco were widely used for “greene wounds, ulcers, and old sores of all sorts.”

In 1595,⁴ the English writer “A.C.” published a book of reports by respected physicians in Spain and France about conditions cured by tobacco, including consumption and “wounds, cuts, or other harmes.”⁴ He wrote that “drinking” tobacco [an Elizabethan term for smoking] in the morning after fasting will “fetch the corruption off the stomacke,” treat headache, and remove weariness.⁴ He provided numerous formulations for administering tobacco as well as anecdotal reports of people with significant injuries, ulcers, gout, and asthma who were cured by tobacco.

The opposition of King James to medicinal tobacco

The medicinal use of tobacco became increasingly contentious in 1603 when King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth. He was vehemently opposed to tobacco in general and to its medicinal uses. He stated that his opposition was at least partly due to the fact that the use of tobacco was learned from “barbarous Indians” in the New World and because they used it to treat syphilis, a New World disease. Tobacco, he said, was being used as “a preservative, or Antidot [antidote] against the Pockes [syphilis], a filthy disease.”⁹

His intense opposition to medicinal tobacco was also an offshoot of his opposition to smoking itself. This opposition may have begun even before his accession to the throne of England, and may have been known to the public.

In 1604, King James wrote and published a twenty-three-page pamphlet, A Counterblaste to Tobacco,⁹ opposing both social smoking and the medicinal uses of tobacco. The pamphlet referred to smoking tobacco as:

a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, daungerous to the Lungs and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse [i.e. Hell].

He seems to have had an intuitive understanding that the evidence for cures from medicinal tobacco came from uncontrolled observations. He wrote that although people claim to have been cured by tobacco, “if a man chance to recover … of any disease, after he hath taken Tobacco,” his recovery might not have been because of the tobacco.

In this argument there is first a great mistaking … because peradventure [perhaps] when a sicke man hath had his disease at the height, hee hath at that instant taken Tobacco, and afterward his disease taking the naturall course of declining, and consequently the patient of recovering his health, O then [it is claimed that] the Tobacco forsooth, was the worker of that miracle.⁹

Furthermore, he questioned whether one substance could be a cure-all for so many diseases. He asked, “What greater absurditie can there bee, then to say that one cure shall serve for divers, nay, contrarious sortes of diseases?”⁹

Shakespeare and tobacco

Shakespeare never mentioned tobacco in any of his thirty-eight plays.^10,11,12 He also never referred to smoking tobacco, pipes for tobacco, or snuff.¹³ In contrast, his friend and fellow playwright, Ben Jonson (1572–1637), used the word tobacco ninety-one times, mostly in his four best-known plays.^14,15

Shakespeare was born seventy-two years after Columbus’ first voyage, which brought tobacco from the West Indies to Spain. By the time of Shakespeare’s birth, the use of tobacco had spread to England, mainly by intra-European trade between Spain and England. By 1570, two species of tobacco were being cultivated in England, Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica.^16,17 By 1586, tobacco was being shipped to England directly from English colonies, and this contributed to its widespread use in London. King James commented on the widespread use when he wrote that tobacco use “spreades, till it be practised by all … only because it is come to be the fashion,” and described the popularity of tobacco smoking in London, where “a man cannot heartily welcome his friend now, but straight they must bee in hand with Tobacco.”^9,18

In Shakespeare’s lifetime, voyages to the New World, with their aura of adventure and findings of massive riches, were still a topic of wide interest. Shakespeare referred to the New World five times in his writings: he mentioned America by name once (Comedy of Errors III:ii:136), a South American animal (the marmoset) once (Tempest II:ii:174), Guiana once (Merry Wives I:iii:76), the West Indies once (Merry Wives I:iii:79), and alluded to the West Indies a second time (Twelfth Night III:ii:84-85). Although The Tempest was based on an actual shipwreck in Bermuda in 1609, the action is set on an island in the Mediterranean.

Shakespeare is rightly credited with a vast knowledge of plants, but most of the 179 plants¹⁰ he mentioned were native English plants. Presumably he did not mention New World plants because he did not know about many of them. Except for five New World plants that were similar or identical to some Old World plants already in England, he did not mention any plants that also appeared in Monardes’ book of New World medicinal plants.¹⁹

But why didn’t he mention tobacco, since he certainly had seen it in London, both as a stimulant and in its social role. Furthermore, why wasn’t he interested in its seemingly magical cure of many diseases? One might have expected Shakespeare to mention tobacco among the wonders to be found on Prospero’s island in The Tempest. But he did not mention tobacco anywhere.

The widespread popularity of tobacco smoking for relaxation and social interaction in Shakespeare’s London developed at the same time that some physicians^7,8 were excited about the reported cures brought about by tobacco. This excitement was enhanced by the continuing discoveries of new lands and riches in the New World.

There may have been political reasons for Shakespeare not to mention tobacco. It is possible that he avoided it in his plays in deference to King James, who was so intensely opposed to tobacco. Shakespeare had always been very careful to avoid angering the court. He was not only a writer and actor but also a businessman²⁰ who ran an acting company (called “The King’s Men” after 1603, a designation received as a favor from King James). Income for the acting company depended in part on royal patronage. Evidence for this includes the fact that the company produced many performances specifically for the court: at least one play in 1603 and at least seven plays in 1604–1605 are documented as having been performed for the court,²¹ as well as the newly written King Lear performed as the Christmas play at the Palace of Whitehall in 1606²¹ and the first-ever performance of The Tempest at Whitehall on Hallowmas Night, November 1, 1611.^21,22 At least six plays by Shakespeare were performed at the wedding of the King’s daughter in 1613.²²

Producing plays for the court required pre-screening to ensure the acceptability of the content. Each play had to be pre-performed before Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels under both Queen Elizabeth and King James, who was responsible for making sure the plays contained nothing offensive to the court and who, in the words of another contemporary playwright, was responsible for “reforming” the plays if needed.²³ This included avoiding mention of feuding between the King and Parliament, for instance, as well as other issues. The King’s opposition to tobacco could have played a role in this screening.

Another possible explanation is that someone might have removed references to tobacco before the plays were published, out of deference to King James’ opposition to tobacco. A collection of thirty-six of Shakespeare’s plays, known as “The First Folio,” was published in 1623, seven years after his death, including eighteen plays for which this was the first publication. Someone could have removed all mention of tobacco during editing before the plays were published. The Tempest, whose plot would have been a convenient place to have discussed tobacco, was one of the plays first published in the First Folio.

The main stimulus for the medical use of tobacco in sixteenth-century Europe was the accounts of its use by natives of the Americas in the treatment of illnesses and injuries. Although some experimentation on treating animals with tobacco was done in Spain during the sixteenth century,²⁴ in general tobacco was used medically in patients based on reports from the New World or by extrapolation to other diseases,^1,4,8 without any animal experimentation.

Today, tobacco is no longer used to treat diseases or injuries. It has significant health risks,²⁵ which were not fully recognized until the early twentieth century. A leading pharmacology textbook of our times²⁶ describes the active ingredient in tobacco, nicotine, not from the perspective of a therapy, but of a toxin. The only accepted therapeutic use of nicotine now is for maintaining blood nicotine concentrations to assist in the withdrawal from smoking tobacco.²⁶

End notes and references

In any quotations in the text from references 1, 4, 7, 8, and 9, the original spelling has been maintained except the “long s” (which looks like an “f”) and “u” for a lower case “v,” which have been changed to modern font for ease of reading.

1. Monardes N. Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde Worlde, translated by Frampton J, introduction by Gaselee S. London: Constable, 1925. Obtained from the Hathi Trust, English Books Online, in the section “Early English books, 1475-1640;” viewed at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4329698. The citation of the original Spanish publication is: Monardes N. Primera y Segunda y Tercera Partes de la Historia Medicinal de las Cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina. Seville: Alonso Escrivano, 1574.
2.  Joyfull Newes Out of the Newe Founde Worlde was originally published in Spanish in 1574. This volume was translated into English by Frampton in 1577. The 1574 volume in Spanish was a combination of two earlier, smaller volumes published in 1569 and 1571 that were so popular that this larger volume was created and published. The citation in reference #1 is to a 1925 integration of all three English editions (1577, 1580, and 1596), each of which contained additional text compared to the preceding edition(s), according to Gaselee’s introduction.
3. Monardes never traveled to the New World. In addition to being a practicing physician for more than forty years,¹ he also had a second occupation as an international trader. He lived in Seville, which was the primary port for ships returning from Spain’s New World colonies, which gave him access to New World plants. In addition, four of his seven children spent extensive time in the New World, and one moved permanently to Peru.¹ The site of Monardes’ garden is marked today by a prominent plaque on the front wall of a house in Seville (see https://notevenpast.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Monardes-plaque-Seville.jpg).
4. “A.C.” Tabacco [sic]: The Distinct and Severall Opinions of the Late and Best Phisitions that have Written of the Divers Natures and Qualities Thereof. London: Adam Islip, 1595. (HathiTrust) Viewed at: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hn5tw5.
5. “Philaretas.” Work for Chimny-sweepers [sic]; or, a Warning for Tabacconists [sic], Describing the Pernicious Use of Tabacco [sic], No Lesse Pleasant then Profitable for All Sorts to Reade. London: Thomas Bushell, 1602. (HathiTrust) Viewed at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112114880286&seq=18).
6. Of the twenty-four pages about medicinal tobacco in reference #1, Monardes wrote pages 75–91 and his translator, Frampton, added pages 92–98, which he (Frampton) had written.
7. Barclay W. Nepenthes, or The Vertues [sic] of Tabacco [sic]. Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1614. (HathiTrust) Viewed at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/chi.12626032.
8. Bellamy, “Doctor.” A New and Short Defense of Tabacco [sic]: with the Effectes of the Same: and of the Right Use Thereof. London: Clement Knight, 1602. (HathiTrust) Viewed at: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hn5twb.
9. James I, King of England. A Counterblaste to Tobacco. London: R. Barker, 1604. Transcription available at: Early English Books Online, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections, at https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A04242.0001.001. Facsimile available at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Counterblaste_to_Tobacco/igEeJzd1umoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP13&printsec=frontcover.
10. Ellacombe HN. The Plant-lore & Garden-craft of Shakespeare, 2^nd edition. London: W. Satchell and Co., 1884. (Internet Archive) Viewed at http://www.archive.org/details/plant-loregarden00ellarich. Page 4, FN 1.
11. The fact that Shakespeare never mentioned tobacco was first reported by Ellacombe in 1884,¹⁰ but without any explanation or analysis.
12. Open Source Shakespeare. Concordance of Shakespeare’s Complete Works. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University, 2023-2025. Viewed at https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/.
13. When Shakespeare did use words such as “smoking,” he was not referring to tobacco use. He used the word “smoking” to refer either to a state of excitation (as in “smoking blood,” “smoking swords,” “smoking with pride”) or to the action of fumigating a room (“as I was smoking a musty room”). When he mentioned a “pipe” or “pipes,” he was referring either to a musical instrument (“more musical than the pipe of Hermes”), to an anatomical tube such as a blood vessel (“in every vein … those shrunk pipes”) or the trachea (“let not hemp his wind-pipe suffocate”), to a medical tool (“clyster-pipes”), to a measure for wine (“I think I shall drink in pipe wine”), or was using it as a broad metaphor (“rumour is a pipe blown by surmises”). When he used the word “snuff” he was referring either to extinguishing a candle (“ ‘tis I must snuff it; then out it goes”) or to the act of sniffing something (“as if you snuffed up love by smelling love”), including the sniffing a pouncet-box (containing perfume to counteract foul smells: “a pouncet-box … took it in snuff”). Other similar examples in these categories also can be found in his plays.
14. Crawford C. A Complete Concordance to the 1616 Folio of Ben Jonson’s Works: Also to the Quarto Versions of Every Man In His Humor, Every Man Out of Humor, Cynthia’s Revels, The Poetaster, Catiline, The Fox and The Alchemist. London: 1923, pages 248-250. From an unpublished manuscript in the library of the University of Michigan. (HathiTrust) Viewed at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101900836.
15. Eighty-five of the 91 times Jonson mentioned “tobacco,” or a compound word containing it,¹⁴ were in the following four plays: Every Man Out of Humor, Every Man in His Humor, Cynthia’s Revels, and The Alchemist.
16. BSBI – Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. Plant Atlas 2020. Viewed in 2025 at https://plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9h.ea3.
17. BSBI¹⁶ states that N. rustica may have been cultivated in Great Britain for use as an insecticide, as well as for smoking, as early as the sixteenth century.
18. The url in reference #5 (“Philaretas,” 1602) includes an introduction by S.H. Atkins written in 1936 that cites numerous Elizabethan and early seventeenth century publications that attest to the widespread social use of tobacco in London during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
19. Shakespeare mentioned five plants^10,12 that are similar or identical to five New World medicinal plants described by Monardes¹ (fig, pepper, rhubarb, ginger, and balsam). Shakespeare used two of them in medical metaphors (“What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, would scour these English hence?” Macbeth V:iii:55-56; and “Is this the balsam that the usuring Senate pours into captains’ wounds?” Timon of Athens III:v:110-111). However, the same or similar species had been available in Europe since the Middle Ages and/or the Roman Empire due to overland importation from Asia.¹⁶ Shakespeare did not mention any of the more exotic New World medicinal plants described by Monardes, and he did not mention tobacco.
20. As owner of an acting company, Shakespeare was a businessman and eventually he became a landowner, as well as being a writer and actor. He earned money from his acting company in London and invested it in real estate and agriculture near Stratford. In his will, he left to his oldest daughter Susanna three houses in Stratford, an apartment in London, and various agricultural lands and buildings around Stratford and elsewhere. See Shakespeare’s will at: Shakespeare W. “Shakespeare’s Will.” The National Archives (United Kingdom): 1616. Viewed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/additional_image_types.asp?extra_image_type_id=2&image_id=29.
21. Brown I. Shakespeare. New York: Time, 1949, pages 288-9.
22. Harrison GB, ed. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952, pages 9, 1471, 1502.
23. Shapiro J. The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.
24. Norton M. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, pages 111-112, 117.
25. Kasper DL, Fauci AS, Hauser SL, Longo DL, Jameson JL, Loscalzo J, eds. Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 19^th edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2015. Pages 2729-2732.
26. Brunton LL and Knollmann BC, eds. Goodman & Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 14^th edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2023. Pages 244-247, 549.