Recently uncovered evidence suggests that William Shakespeare used marijuana, and now a team of paleontologists want to dig him up to prove it.

Francis Thackeray, an anthropologist and director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, has made a formal request to the Church of England to unearth the playwright.

"We have incredible techniques," Thackeray told Fox News. "We don't intend to move the remains at all."

After determining the identity of the remains, Thackeray's team hopes to find out more about Shakespeare's life and even the cause of his death.

"Growth increments in the teeth will reveal if he went through periods of stress or illness -- a plague for example, which killed many people in the 1600s," he said.

Further tests should be able to ascertain if the bard smoked marijuana.

"If we find grooves between the canine and the incisor, that will tell us if he was chewing on a pipe as well as smoking," Thackeray explained.