The Alchemist

What It's About

While plague empties London, the butler Face teams up with the fake alchemist Subtle and their accomplice Dol Common to run a con from his absent master's house. Their clients arrive one after another, each hoping the philosopher's stone will bring wealth, status or luck. They include the lawyer's clerk Dapper, the tobacconist Drugger, the sensualist Sir Epicure Mammon, and the Puritans Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome. The schemes tangle, the visitors begin to collide with one another, and the house becomes harder to control as the play goes on. First performed in 1610, it is a city comedy in verse, and it keeps to a single location and roughly a single day.

Key Concepts

Jonson uses alchemy as a vehicle for satire. The jargon and promises of transmutation mirror the greed and self-deception of everyone who believes in them. The play also mocks the religious hypocrisy of the Puritan characters, whose scruples bend easily around profit. Critics have long admired its construction. Coleridge ranked its plot among the most perfect ever devised, and Jonson's use of the classical unities of time, place and action is one reason. Its dense period slang and alchemical vocabulary can be demanding, but the comedy of the situations carries through.

About the Author

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was an English playwright, poet and actor, and one of the leading figures of Jacobean theatre. Born in Westminster, he studied under the scholar William Camden before working as a bricklayer, soldier and actor. He became known for learned, satirical comedies and for his prickly, combative personality. He was a contemporary and sometime rival of Shakespeare, and he influenced a generation of later writers.