Many have expressed—surprise -that neither in his plays nor elsewhere does Shakespeare so much as mention tobacco or smoking, writes a correspondent of the "Morning Post." Although smoking did not receive its first great impetus until 1611, when Raleigh had his pipe shortly before his execution, Shakespeare must have seen something of tobacco at Stratford, and on arriving in London have found smokers on every hand. When in 1598 played in " Every Man in His Humour," at Greenwich, he had no need' to ask the author what was that "tobacco" that Cob speaks of. At the Globe he, in common with the other actors, must have frequently been made to cough by the fumes that floated up from the pit to the open sky, and he was lucky if he escaped annoyance from the important personages who, taking their seats on the stage, embarrassed the actors by puffing smoke in their faces. He may even have been a smoker himself.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.