The Alchemist by Ben Jonson is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. First performed in 1610 by the King’s Men, it is generally considered Jonson’s best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature.
The play’s clever fulfilment of the classical unities and vivid depiction of human folly have made it one of the few Renaissance plays (except the works of Shakespeare) with a continuing life on stage, apart from a period of neglect during the Victorian era.
An outbreak of plague in London forces a gentleman, Lovewit, to flee temporarily to the country. He leaves his house under the sole charge of his butler, Jeremy. Jeremy uses the opportunity given to him to use the house as the headquarters for fraudulent acts. He transforms himself into ‘Captain Face, ‘ and enlists the aid of Subtle, a fellow conman, and Dol Common, a prostitute.
The play opens with a violent argument between Subtle and Face concerning the division of the riches which they have, and will continue to gather. Face threatens to have an engraving made of Subtle with a face worse than that of the notorious highwayman Gamaliel Ratsey. Dol breaks the pair apart and reasons with them that they must work as a team if they are to succeed.
Their first customer is Dapper, a lawyer’s clerk who wishes Subtle to use his supposed necromantic skills to summon a ‘familiar’ or spirit to help in his gambling ambitions. The tripartite suggest that Dapper may win favour with the ‘Queen of Fairy, ‘ but he must subject himself to humiliating rituals in order for her to help him. Their second gull is Drugger, a tobacconist, who is keen to establish a profitable business.
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