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The Alchemist and Other Plays
This edition brings together Jonson's four great comedies in one volume. Volpone, which was first performed in 1606, dramatizes the corrupting nature of greed in an exuberant satire set in contemporary Venice. The first production of Epicene marked the end of a year long closure of the theatres because of an epidemic of the plague in 1609; its comedy affirms the consolatory power of laughter at such a time. The Alchemist (1610) deploys the metaphors of alchemical transformation to emphasize the mutability of the characters and their relationships. In Bartholomew Fair (1614) Jonson embroils the visitors to the fair in its myriad tempations, exposing the materialistic impulses beneath the apparent godliness of Jacobean Puritans.
Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. Stage directions hvae been added to facilitate the reconstruction of the plays' performance, and there is a scholarly introduction, detailed annotation, and a glossary.
Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. Stage directions hvae been added to facilitate the reconstruction of the plays' performance, and there is a scholarly introduction, detailed annotation, and a glossary.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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469 people want to read
About the author
Ben Jonson
1,394 books188 followersBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. A house in Dulwich College is named after him.
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
February 4, 2023
read the whole thing, but somehow still don’t know what it’s about. alchemy?
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June 21, 2023begins with the word fart… need i say more? 5 stars x
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November 4, 2025City comedies may have grown on me exponentially as a genre but Jonson still has a knack for rubbing me the wrong way. Much more of a Middleton man
January 19, 2025
According to the wishes of the late Master Jonson, given that I expended €9.40 for the acquisition of this compilation, I shall thereby offer criticism equalling the expense—being a very cheap man myself.
In this compilation, we have four of Jonson's most revered comic plays: Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair. The first and the third one are written in metre, and the remaining two are more or less prose; at the same time, this formal differentiation seems also to be reflected on the level of plot, as the first set relies more on the tightness of plot while the second set seems to revel in their own verbal extravagance, the plot being a mere setting in the background for the literary and thespian flourishes.
Since Jonson was proud enough of his own writing to release a good chunk of his plays in printed form, I think we can safely discuss the literary merits of the plays, without always hiding behind the cloak of acting. Jonson's writing style is at the same times painfully obvious and devilishly laden with allusion. The Alchemist offers a good example of this in Act II: the reader is treated to lengthy dissertations on alchemy, with apparently accurate employment of the now-obscure terminology with some pertinent allusions in addition, yet all the time the main point behind the logorrhea is that the alchemist Subtle and his aide Face are simply shafting credulous cretins. Another, more notorious example is in Epicene, where a fake lawyer and a fake priest are (implausibly) regurgitating legal Latin jargon at the crank of the play, Morose: once again we have apparently germane terminology that the reader is bombarded with, with a dash of painfully dull quips in the middle ("Matrimonium? We shall have most unmatrimonial Latin with you: matrimonia, and be hanged."). The only difference is that Morose does actually understand Latin. But for the reader, whether they know Latin or not, or whether they are au fait with the alchemic lingo, this makes a very unrewarding read in terms of comedy: either you check every allusion and be exhausted in the process, or you go with the flow and shrug your way through. I took the former route, knowing a smidgen of Latin, but I can't say that any of the footnotes helped me appreciate neither the mastery of the quill nor the putative comic genius of Jonson.
If Shakespeare's "rap battles" seem very tedious at times, Jonson's are so doubly. Jonson also seems more obscure to the modern reader than Shakespeare because of the former's penchant for turning each phrase into a Sphinx-like mystery. Well, since the language itself seems fairly tepid (reaching none of the heights that we know Shakespeare to have reached and overreached), these mysteries come and go in a procession akin to a dull circus performance: yes, we see animals and clowns and fire-eaters and human cannonballs, but none of it manages to excite us. Even the occasional tart and fart jokes appear sucked out of their perennial amusement, even if one must own that Jonson could, fortuitously, happen upon a nice, biting insult (such as "you whoreson lobster").
I'm sure the high frequency of Jonson's lightly-buried allusions affected my enjoyment of his comedies. But even when I would decide that I wouldn't check the footnotes, there was very little there to amuse me. Jonson's dialogue can be demeaningly obvious (scraps of jokes for the peanut gallery no one wants to belong to), and his plays can also have embarrassingly clumsy resolutions. Take The Alchemist, the plot of which was vaunted by Coleridge as one of the top 3 in the English language. We have a tangled web of different parties the alchemist Subtle and his helped Face want to hoodwink. These come in in orderly succession at first, yet soon they begin to overlap, making it very hot for the swindlers to manage. Well, they still manage pretty well, and even manage to ward off one who discovered their plot. And what brings on the catastrophe? The return of Face's master, who just appears out of nowhere, and (of course) at the most opportune time to see all the people crowd about his house. Face manages not to lose his sangfroid, and quite conveniently manages to get the clamouring, swindled mob away from the house, reconciles with his master by quickly marrying him off to a random girl, confiscates the swindled loot in the name of his master, packs off the alchemist and Bob's your uncle. It just screams of lazy dénouement, where the untying of the knots at the end does not correspond to the difficulty of the scheming during the other parts of the play. As if everyone would simply let the matter slide, especially the alchemist, who should be pretty damned furious at being cheated himself so (given how fraught his relationship with Face was to begin with).
Nor does Jonson ever really know when to stop. In the two non-metrical plays, the characters have ridiculously lengthy monologues that are not particularly well-written nor funny. Bartholomew Fair does not even rely on any proper plot, it just wants to revel in the fair atmos, which makes it the most nonsensical of the plays. People go to the fair for silly reasons, disguises are donned, people are shafted and prostituted, a justice of peace walks around in disguise and likes the fact that he was put in stocks, there's a dumb puppet-show and everybody gets their comeupp... no sorry, everybody gets invited to the justice's house for cakes and ale, since the justice himself was shafted quite cleverly, and so he naturally forgives everything! By this point, one has read over a hundred pages of drivel spiced with dimwitty allusions to prostitution and vapours.
The crowning turd-i'-the-teeth of all the plays has to be Epicene, whose plot involves a scheme for a young knight to be restored in the testament of his cranky uncle. The scheme is never really hazarded, apart from one quite pointless instance at the beginning of the play, where a friend of the knight's wants to help things and ends up making them worse—for like three seconds, and everything is fixed again. There never seems to be any actual fear that the scheme might fail, and of course, despite his friends' wit and cleverness, the knight was one step ahead of everyone and would have succeeded anyway. The rest of the play is more or less just drinking, roaring and prating about women. One sustained joke is that the uncle, Morose, hates all kinds of noise; so of course everyone clangs and clatters like there's no tomorrow (one even begins to feel sorry for Morose, since his character as a crank is not well-established enough). The whole Act IV seems to be entirely pointless, being based on the fact that two blockheads end up talking behind the knight's back, and his friends and he grow furious and wreak vengeance on them. There's also lots of Ovidian talk about how women are easy to pull, and how a college of women use sex to control their husbands, and such nonsense. In Jonson's hands, it just turns into a stinking mess.
This, then, is his mordant criticism on the folly of Mankind? To me, it seemed like a bloated Renaissance humanist letting it rip with all their accumulated learning while hoping that the power of the setting alone would keep the audience amused. The only play that I somewhat enjoyed was Volpone, and even that was mostly because of the plot, not the language. The plot quite ingeniously does what The Alchemist is purported to have done: it piles trickery upon trickery, weaves the web into more and more intricate and inextricable a knot, and resolves everything quite satisfactorily (despite certain conveniences). The main force of the play is the desire of personal advantage, and this force happens to be the very one that brings about the failure of the scheme, in conjunction with a newcomer called the voice of conscience. But since Volpone was the very first play in the compilation, I can't say that after trudging through the tedium of Bartholomew Fair, I felt I was in the least rewarded by the successes of the first play.
Speaking of Bartholomew Fair, a character therein, one Knockem, might as well have addressed the playwright himself when he demanded:
"Do you hear, puppet-master, these are tedious vapours, when begin you?"
Yes, "vapours" also means "flatulence". And Jonson is all fart and no poo.
In this compilation, we have four of Jonson's most revered comic plays: Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair. The first and the third one are written in metre, and the remaining two are more or less prose; at the same time, this formal differentiation seems also to be reflected on the level of plot, as the first set relies more on the tightness of plot while the second set seems to revel in their own verbal extravagance, the plot being a mere setting in the background for the literary and thespian flourishes.
Since Jonson was proud enough of his own writing to release a good chunk of his plays in printed form, I think we can safely discuss the literary merits of the plays, without always hiding behind the cloak of acting. Jonson's writing style is at the same times painfully obvious and devilishly laden with allusion. The Alchemist offers a good example of this in Act II: the reader is treated to lengthy dissertations on alchemy, with apparently accurate employment of the now-obscure terminology with some pertinent allusions in addition, yet all the time the main point behind the logorrhea is that the alchemist Subtle and his aide Face are simply shafting credulous cretins. Another, more notorious example is in Epicene, where a fake lawyer and a fake priest are (implausibly) regurgitating legal Latin jargon at the crank of the play, Morose: once again we have apparently germane terminology that the reader is bombarded with, with a dash of painfully dull quips in the middle ("Matrimonium? We shall have most unmatrimonial Latin with you: matrimonia, and be hanged."). The only difference is that Morose does actually understand Latin. But for the reader, whether they know Latin or not, or whether they are au fait with the alchemic lingo, this makes a very unrewarding read in terms of comedy: either you check every allusion and be exhausted in the process, or you go with the flow and shrug your way through. I took the former route, knowing a smidgen of Latin, but I can't say that any of the footnotes helped me appreciate neither the mastery of the quill nor the putative comic genius of Jonson.
If Shakespeare's "rap battles" seem very tedious at times, Jonson's are so doubly. Jonson also seems more obscure to the modern reader than Shakespeare because of the former's penchant for turning each phrase into a Sphinx-like mystery. Well, since the language itself seems fairly tepid (reaching none of the heights that we know Shakespeare to have reached and overreached), these mysteries come and go in a procession akin to a dull circus performance: yes, we see animals and clowns and fire-eaters and human cannonballs, but none of it manages to excite us. Even the occasional tart and fart jokes appear sucked out of their perennial amusement, even if one must own that Jonson could, fortuitously, happen upon a nice, biting insult (such as "you whoreson lobster").
I'm sure the high frequency of Jonson's lightly-buried allusions affected my enjoyment of his comedies. But even when I would decide that I wouldn't check the footnotes, there was very little there to amuse me. Jonson's dialogue can be demeaningly obvious (scraps of jokes for the peanut gallery no one wants to belong to), and his plays can also have embarrassingly clumsy resolutions. Take The Alchemist, the plot of which was vaunted by Coleridge as one of the top 3 in the English language. We have a tangled web of different parties the alchemist Subtle and his helped Face want to hoodwink. These come in in orderly succession at first, yet soon they begin to overlap, making it very hot for the swindlers to manage. Well, they still manage pretty well, and even manage to ward off one who discovered their plot. And what brings on the catastrophe? The return of Face's master, who just appears out of nowhere, and (of course) at the most opportune time to see all the people crowd about his house. Face manages not to lose his sangfroid, and quite conveniently manages to get the clamouring, swindled mob away from the house, reconciles with his master by quickly marrying him off to a random girl, confiscates the swindled loot in the name of his master, packs off the alchemist and Bob's your uncle. It just screams of lazy dénouement, where the untying of the knots at the end does not correspond to the difficulty of the scheming during the other parts of the play. As if everyone would simply let the matter slide, especially the alchemist, who should be pretty damned furious at being cheated himself so (given how fraught his relationship with Face was to begin with).
Nor does Jonson ever really know when to stop. In the two non-metrical plays, the characters have ridiculously lengthy monologues that are not particularly well-written nor funny. Bartholomew Fair does not even rely on any proper plot, it just wants to revel in the fair atmos, which makes it the most nonsensical of the plays. People go to the fair for silly reasons, disguises are donned, people are shafted and prostituted, a justice of peace walks around in disguise and likes the fact that he was put in stocks, there's a dumb puppet-show and everybody gets their comeupp... no sorry, everybody gets invited to the justice's house for cakes and ale, since the justice himself was shafted quite cleverly, and so he naturally forgives everything! By this point, one has read over a hundred pages of drivel spiced with dimwitty allusions to prostitution and vapours.
The crowning turd-i'-the-teeth of all the plays has to be Epicene, whose plot involves a scheme for a young knight to be restored in the testament of his cranky uncle. The scheme is never really hazarded, apart from one quite pointless instance at the beginning of the play, where a friend of the knight's wants to help things and ends up making them worse—for like three seconds, and everything is fixed again. There never seems to be any actual fear that the scheme might fail, and of course, despite his friends' wit and cleverness, the knight was one step ahead of everyone and would have succeeded anyway. The rest of the play is more or less just drinking, roaring and prating about women. One sustained joke is that the uncle, Morose, hates all kinds of noise; so of course everyone clangs and clatters like there's no tomorrow (one even begins to feel sorry for Morose, since his character as a crank is not well-established enough). The whole Act IV seems to be entirely pointless, being based on the fact that two blockheads end up talking behind the knight's back, and his friends and he grow furious and wreak vengeance on them. There's also lots of Ovidian talk about how women are easy to pull, and how a college of women use sex to control their husbands, and such nonsense. In Jonson's hands, it just turns into a stinking mess.
This, then, is his mordant criticism on the folly of Mankind? To me, it seemed like a bloated Renaissance humanist letting it rip with all their accumulated learning while hoping that the power of the setting alone would keep the audience amused. The only play that I somewhat enjoyed was Volpone, and even that was mostly because of the plot, not the language. The plot quite ingeniously does what The Alchemist is purported to have done: it piles trickery upon trickery, weaves the web into more and more intricate and inextricable a knot, and resolves everything quite satisfactorily (despite certain conveniences). The main force of the play is the desire of personal advantage, and this force happens to be the very one that brings about the failure of the scheme, in conjunction with a newcomer called the voice of conscience. But since Volpone was the very first play in the compilation, I can't say that after trudging through the tedium of Bartholomew Fair, I felt I was in the least rewarded by the successes of the first play.
Speaking of Bartholomew Fair, a character therein, one Knockem, might as well have addressed the playwright himself when he demanded:
"Do you hear, puppet-master, these are tedious vapours, when begin you?"
Yes, "vapours" also means "flatulence". And Jonson is all fart and no poo.
September 29, 2020
A servant's master has gone out of town for a few months to escape the plague. Plotting to use this vacant house for nefarious activity, the servant — who Jonson aptly names 'Face' — teams up with a local thief and prostitute. The trio pretend to be an alchemist and his assistants to scam the people of London.
Much of the comedy derives from gullibility and greed of Face, Subtle and Doll's customers who are so desperate to possess the mythical philosopher's tone that allows them to control life and death. We follow the trio's scheme from the start, watching as they whip up lie after lie to hoodwink each customer that walks through the door.
The reason I picked up The Alchemist is because it was a primary text for the 'Writing the City' module for my degree and I must say that it's a departure from the kind of Elizabethan comedy that I'm used to reading. For a start, it's clear from 'The Argument' that precedes the criminal caper that Jonson intended this play to be read as well as watched as he includes an acrostic poem with the first letter of each line spelling 'The Alchemist.'
It's a thrilling play that reveals the crime underworld of the time as well as the greedy motivations of those who buy into the scam. There is so much joy to be found in Jonson's writing with laughs aplenty as the trio's web of lies begin to collide and cause chaos. It's fast-paced, witty and often ridiculous.
While the language isn't too complex, The Alchemist, like most pieces from the period, will require a fair amount of time and effort while reading. However, I can't recommend the Oxford World Classics annotated edition enough - it's excellent for explaining the references Jonson makes that are obscure to a modern audience. I rarely venture into the world of classical plays outside of Shakespeare so it was nice to get the opportunity to see what else is out there and, with all respect to the Bard, it was a refreshing change. The Alchemist is a great place to start if you're looking to get into Elizabethan comedies!
Much of the comedy derives from gullibility and greed of Face, Subtle and Doll's customers who are so desperate to possess the mythical philosopher's tone that allows them to control life and death. We follow the trio's scheme from the start, watching as they whip up lie after lie to hoodwink each customer that walks through the door.
The reason I picked up The Alchemist is because it was a primary text for the 'Writing the City' module for my degree and I must say that it's a departure from the kind of Elizabethan comedy that I'm used to reading. For a start, it's clear from 'The Argument' that precedes the criminal caper that Jonson intended this play to be read as well as watched as he includes an acrostic poem with the first letter of each line spelling 'The Alchemist.'
It's a thrilling play that reveals the crime underworld of the time as well as the greedy motivations of those who buy into the scam. There is so much joy to be found in Jonson's writing with laughs aplenty as the trio's web of lies begin to collide and cause chaos. It's fast-paced, witty and often ridiculous.
While the language isn't too complex, The Alchemist, like most pieces from the period, will require a fair amount of time and effort while reading. However, I can't recommend the Oxford World Classics annotated edition enough - it's excellent for explaining the references Jonson makes that are obscure to a modern audience. I rarely venture into the world of classical plays outside of Shakespeare so it was nice to get the opportunity to see what else is out there and, with all respect to the Bard, it was a refreshing change. The Alchemist is a great place to start if you're looking to get into Elizabethan comedies!
June 4, 2008
His best? The Alchemist. Bartholemew's Fair. The Devil is an Ass. Avoid Every Man in his Humour like the plague that it is...
June 5, 2017
It's a lot harder to get through most of these when you're reading them vs. watching them be performed. It can be particularly hard to keep straight which character's been told which lie through all the conning that's done throughout most of these plays when reading it, but I've found it's extremely helpful to read the play and then find a version to watch to reinforce what you read.
As far as the plays themselves, I can see why Shakespeare is more highly valued, since his material is more diverse and variable than this. Jonson seems to keep repeating the con-man plot (at least in this selection).
Jonson always seems to take a more pessimistic route, and both the cozeners and the cozened are terrible, selfish, and greedy people. His plays seem devoid of all hope as far as the existence of any beauty and truth in humanity - even those who claim to be pure are in reality corrupt and evil. Very seldom does he portray any character at all that has pure motives. For him, each individual is fighting a battle to seem relevant to others - even if everyone except them knows the real outcome of this effort is their seeming ridiculous. There are many facets and themes in these plays which would definitely require many essays and spoilers to discuss, and it was definitely a good investment of my time to read them. Bartholomew Fair is my favorite one by far, though.
As far as the plays themselves, I can see why Shakespeare is more highly valued, since his material is more diverse and variable than this. Jonson seems to keep repeating the con-man plot (at least in this selection).
Jonson always seems to take a more pessimistic route, and both the cozeners and the cozened are terrible, selfish, and greedy people. His plays seem devoid of all hope as far as the existence of any beauty and truth in humanity - even those who claim to be pure are in reality corrupt and evil. Very seldom does he portray any character at all that has pure motives. For him, each individual is fighting a battle to seem relevant to others - even if everyone except them knows the real outcome of this effort is their seeming ridiculous. There are many facets and themes in these plays which would definitely require many essays and spoilers to discuss, and it was definitely a good investment of my time to read them. Bartholomew Fair is my favorite one by far, though.
November 3, 2021
the more i understood this, the more i liked it! i found it quite amusing and i liked the way Jonson explored social hierarchy and capitalism whilst still making it entertaining to read.
however, i wouldn't recommend starting to read this 2 days before the seminar when you have too many essays to do.
however, i wouldn't recommend starting to read this 2 days before the seminar when you have too many essays to do.
Read
December 2, 2020DNF'd
I was reading Bartholomew Fair for a class, was not liking the play, so I DNF'd.
Disliked: characters, writing, scenes, the language used to describe other characters.
Thoughts: vulgar and almost unintelligible.
Bring Shakespeare back, please.
I was reading Bartholomew Fair for a class, was not liking the play, so I DNF'd.
Disliked: characters, writing, scenes, the language used to describe other characters.
Thoughts: vulgar and almost unintelligible.
Bring Shakespeare back, please.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 27, 2021
A fine edition of 17th century play write Ben Jonson a contemporary and friend of William Shakespeare. His comedies populated by extravagant and immoderate characters, who display a quickness of wit and general lightness that has ensured their continued performance since they were written.
March 18, 2019
Volpone
wonderful wonderful
I really enjoyed the play but the essay (on narrative prostheticism and disability drag) was toUGH
wonderful wonderful
I really enjoyed the play but the essay (on narrative prostheticism and disability drag) was toUGH
Read
October 16, 2019Volpone ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
August 23, 2020
Absolutely brilliant! Very funny. Serves as a warning to not be ‘cozened’ by ‘alchemists’ who have to ability to change into whatever may suit your needs
Read
July 17, 2021only read “The Alchemist”
July 26, 2021
An awesome read for anyone. Jonson is a damn good writer.
Read
July 9, 2024Volpone 1606,
Epicene 1609;
The Alchemist (1610)
Bartholomew Fair (1614)
Epicene 1609;
The Alchemist (1610)
Bartholomew Fair (1614)
February 28, 2025
(Just epicene)
June 5, 2025
The Alchemist is a masterful satire that brilliantly exposes human greed, gullibility, and ambition...
April 5, 2022
A 'plague on both your houses' early seventeenth-century urban comedy first staged at the end of the pandemic that had caused the closure of all London theatres. Despite the obvious relevance to our own times, The Alchemist seems not to have enthused the post-Covid class of 2022. Admittedly, I find the script of more historic than dramatic interest, but an effective performance can transform its base metal into gold.
May 21, 2024
i've read Volpone and Bartholomew Fair but not the others, so maybe the other plays are fantastic and i've just stopped before hitting gold.
i don't get Jonson. many applaud him for his societal critique, satire, and comedy, and as Shakespeare's contemporary and a famed playwright in his own right i feel like i should be singing his praises given my fondness of elizabethan/jacobean plays. regardless, every play i've read from Jonson seems overly simplistic, bland in its characerization, and somewhat crude in its approach. i've missed the cleverness of the bard and the metaphors by Webster that have so inspired my interest in plays, and it has me second-guessing my own judgements and wondering if i've just missed something with Jonson's work. might be something to revisit a few years in the future.
i don't get Jonson. many applaud him for his societal critique, satire, and comedy, and as Shakespeare's contemporary and a famed playwright in his own right i feel like i should be singing his praises given my fondness of elizabethan/jacobean plays. regardless, every play i've read from Jonson seems overly simplistic, bland in its characerization, and somewhat crude in its approach. i've missed the cleverness of the bard and the metaphors by Webster that have so inspired my interest in plays, and it has me second-guessing my own judgements and wondering if i've just missed something with Jonson's work. might be something to revisit a few years in the future.
March 5, 2014
I have yet to finish it but I doubt my opinion will change. I found ut difficult to read due to a comedy that was naturally made to be performed rather than read. I would like to see it adapted but renaissance comedy has always exhausted me more than enthused me. There was a brief moment where I thought I had made a break through in my understanding and therefore my enjoyment of the characters but this was shortlived. Admittedly this was read for a college course which will undoubtedly help in my understanding and means that I actually don't have to read the entire anthology. Frankly the mere thought of having to read all of it exhausts me.
March 18, 2007
I read these plays for a Shakespeare's Contemporaries class. "The Alchemist" and "Bartholomew Fair" are especially hilarious. The class surprised the hell out of me, since in college, I was always apprehensive about reading anything pre-19th century.
March 27, 2009
I found this play to be a bit boring. Like the other Ben Jonson play I read recently I also found this hard to follow. I'm not a fan of old comedy and because this follows old comedy I didn't enjoy it as much as I probably could have.
May 9, 2010
Really difficult for me to read. I'd like to see it on stage.
January 11, 2015
Jonson is just hard work.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews