For centuries in London, the Plague presented a very real danger to its citizens. However, some people were more concerned with other, moral dangers that city life offered, like prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, or cony-catching. In The Alchemist, Ben Jonson presents the interesting idea that not only the Plague thrives within the populated city, but vice also flourishes. Since urban areas historically house more poor people than rural areas, a desire for money may understandably become associated with the inner city. This greed, as Jonson illustrates with his plot and characters, leads to people’s immoral activities.

In this essay, I will examine The Alchemist’s history, explore Jonson’s central themes and characters, and include any relevant background information. To provide an interesting analysis of this work as a product of Jonson’s societal influences, I will consider Jonson’s literary and social evolution by juxtaposing this play with his later work, Bartholomew Fair.
The text of this play was printed in Jonson’s 1616 folio edition, titled Works, and it also appeared in his 1612 quarto edition. Though these two editions appear to have few differences, the second folio of 1640 shows systematic revisions, but most scholars consider the 1616 version to be Jonson’s intentions.

The Alchemist was first performed in 1610 in Oxford by the King’s Men, most likely at the Blackfriar’s private theatre. As Anthony Ouellette points out, The Alchemist was an ideal play for the King’s Men to perform after the move from the Globe Theatre to the Blackfriar’s private theatre, as it explores the interactions between those within the city walls and those without. Thus, the King’s Men’s move from the Globe, a public playhouse within the city’s walls, to the Blackfriar’s Theatre, a private playhouse outside of the city walls, paralleled one of the play’s themes--the suggestion that immoral people may live outside of the city, yet their immoral actions can only occur when brought together within the confines of it. This again relates Jonson’s correlation between vice and the Plague, as the reason the public theatres were closed, in the first place, was because of the severity of this disease. The idea that smaller, private theatres outside of the city walls were not susceptible to the disease while the larger, public theaters inside of the city walls were presents the interesting question of whether vice is similarly contained to the city.

The Alchemist is set in London in 1610, the same setting as when the play was first performed, so it becomes a commentary on the current social scene. Because of the Plague’s contagion, Lovewit flees from the city to the countryside for safety. Upon leaving, he leaves his butler, Face, in charge of his house, and Face takes this opportunity to invite his friends, Subtle and Doll Common, to help him take advantage of strangers’ greed with their profitable cons. The three characters convince numerous other characters that they can profit from Subtle’s Philosopher’s Stone, which turns metal into gold, or from his astrological visions. These characters vary from a gambler who wishes to use Subtle’s visions to win more money to two Puritans who wish to bring money to their congregation.

In fact, Jonson purposefully provides a wide span of immoral characters to satirize, as he demonstrates in his statement that “No clime breeds better matter [than London], for your whore, / Bawd, squire, impostor, [and] many persons more” (Prologue.7-8). Apparently, Jonson believed that a large range of immoral people inhabited London, which is why he reflects this spectrum. Eventually, Lovewit returns home to disrupt the cons profits from these numerous characters, and order is finally restored when Lovewit forgives Face because he arranges Lovewit’s engagement.

This play’s plot and its characters provided relative success to its early performances and the following decades, but it later fell out of favor with audiences and is rarely reproduced on modern stages. This early success most likely reflects the audience’s interest in its immediate social relevance, especially as the play heavily satirizes its Puritan characters. These Puritan characters, Ananias and Tribulation, wish to raise money for their church, yet Subtle and Face suggest that the only possibility for making more money will be if they use the Philosopher’s Stone to create gold. Thus, though Ananias refers to himself as “a faithful brother” (2.5.7), he considers counterfeiting money and, in turn, defying the law.

These two characters present Jonson’s opinion of religious zealots who will defy all of man’s laws and morals in order to rigidly adhere to God’s. In fact, Jonson further mocks Puritans in his creation of Tribulation Wholesome, Ananias’s “very zealous pastor” (2.5.50), who entirely contradicts his “wholesome” name. Though Ananias at least initially denies the Philosopher’s stone, which defies God as “it is a work of darkness, / And, with philosophy, blinds the eyes of man” (3.1.9-10), Tribulation immediately rejects his objections because he believes they “must bend unto all means, / That may give furtherance to the holy cause” (3.1.11-2). Tribulation is perfectly willing to use any means in his life in order to reap benefits for his congregation, even if his actions are immoral. Thus, he is willing to be immoral in order to benefit his life of supposed morality. These two characters’ hypocrisy highlights the central objection of Jonson and his contemporaries, as Puritans’ objections to their plays were based around the idea that the plays were immoral, yet they could be immoral as long as it benefited God. This dislike of hypocrisy, and degrading representation of Puritans, becomes an even stronger theme in one of Jonson’s later works.

This play, although rather different from some of Jonson’s earlier works, like Masque of Queens, exhibits striking similarities to a play he wrote just four years later, Bartholomew Fair. As Arthur Kinney notes, Bartholomew Fair “displays the interconnectedness between human indulgence and exploitation… [and] is a play of craft and cunning. The people who come to the fair and those who work at the fair are alike in their infectious desire and avarice” (171). Similarly, the people who come to Lovewit’s home and become “victims” of Face, Subtle, and Doll, are really victims of their own greed. Thus, as with the people who work at the fair, Face and his accomplices are able to take advantage of and profit from the various people because of these characters’ own excessive desire for money.

As Jonson’s writing chronologically progresses, judgment, either by authorial tone and intent or by characters in the plays, becomes much less “admirable” to the audience (xl). This transformation in Jonson’s writing is most likely a result of his political--more accurately, religious--surroundings. As I already discussed, The Alchemist was written in 1610, at the height of Puritanism in London. Because of Jonson’s dislike of Puritanism’s harsh judgments, he begins to create characters who are sympathetic, despite their vices.

So, his plays’ characters adapt in just a few years because of Jonson’s rising disgust with Puritans’ hypocrisy. In The Alchemist, Jonson’s characters are static and identifiable by their names. For example, Drugger is a Tobacco-man, and Dame Pliant’s name suggests her pliability--which is accurate because she so freely moves from one suitor to another. Face’s name represents the many facades he can apply in order to successfully trick his victims, and I already discussed the irony of Tribulation Wholesome’s name.

In Bartholomew Fair, the characters’ names similarly reveal their identity, and Jonson creates an even more outrageous commentary on Puritanism as he creates the raving character Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. However, the other characters are much more sympathetic, despite their vices. In a matter of a very few years, his characters evolve from The Alchemist’s flat characters to Bartholomew Fair’s characters who are, for the most part, more complex and whose vices are presented as being much less repulsive. This increased disgust with Puritanism, and its reflection through the literature of the time, presents such an interesting cultural revolution, since the increased public displays of intolerance, like with literature and performances, led to the Puritans’ colonization of America. Thus, Jonson’s works provide a societal window through which historians can see the motivations for the beginning of a religious reformation.