Play: The Alchemist

Overview
Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist is a brisk London city comedy set during a plague outbreak, when the citizen Lovewit abandons his Blackfriars house and leaves it to the care of his butler, Jeremy. Seizing the opportunity, Jeremy reinvents himself as Face and enters a “venture tripartite” with the faux philosopher Subtle and the resourceful courtesan Dol Common. Together they convert the house into a buzzing “elaboratory” and confidence shop, selling miracles, fortunes, and the philosopher’s stone to a parade of gulls whose desires power the plot.

Plot and Characters
The conspirators tailor fantasies to each client. Sir Epicure Mammon, a voluptuary, is promised the stone that will yield boundless wealth and sensual delights; Dol, dressed as a noble lady, is dangled as his imminent reward. Dapper, a timid clerk, seeks a lucky familiar to win at dice, so he is blindfolded, gagged, and ritually tormented by Dol masquerading as the Queen of Fairy. Abel Drugger, a dim shopkeeper, asks how to arrange his tobacco stall for prosperity; Subtle spins geomantic lore and extracts fees. Puritan elders Tribulation Wholesome and Ananias want transmutation not for gluttony, they protest, but to fund godly works; their pious cant thinly veils a relish for clipping and coining. Kastril, the newly rich “angry boy,” comes to learn the fashionable art of quarreling and parading honor, bringing his wealthy sister, Dame Pliant, whom Face and Subtle each try to secure in marriage. Surly, Mammon’s skeptical friend, bothers the enterprise by smelling a rat; he later infiltrates them in the disguise of a Spanish don and nearly blows their cover.

The scams mount in speed and intricacy. Each new mark must be hurried out before the next arrives, so Face juggles doors, costumes, and provoked distractions while Subtle conducts his alchemical mumbo-jumbo and Dol is forever on the brink of a feigned madness or aristocratic swoon. Their furnace fires, the sacred “projection,” and the jargon of retorts and alembics create an atmosphere of imminent revelation that is always deferred.

Turning Point and Denouement
The scheme teeters when Surly unmasks himself and exposes the impostures to Kastril and Dame Pliant. Simultaneously, Lovewit unexpectedly returns, alerted by neighbors to the traffic in his house. Face pivots from impostor to domestic servant, shedding his alias, pleading for pardon, and rapidly replotting to save himself. He offers his master the choicest prize: Dame Pliant’s hand, engineered through swift wit while Subtle and Dol scramble to escape with a portion of the takings.

In the final reckoning, the dupes crowd Lovewit’s door seeking justice. He coolly outfaces them, pointing to their own greed, lust, and hypocrisy, and keeps both the marriage and the ill-gotten goods. Subtle and Dol slip away empty-handed. Jeremy, contrite and indispensable, is forgiven and retained. The house resumes its respectable façade, with the city’s folly left outside.

Themes and Style
The play skewers universal credulity, showing how avarice makes the pious and the worldly equally gullible. Jonson binds satire to farce: precise plotting, rapid doorwork, and crackling argot give momentum, while each victim’s fantasy, wealth, status, sanctity, victory at cards, becomes its own trap. The strict unities of time and place heighten the pressure-cooker effect, and the trio’s “alchemy” is ultimately theatrical: a transformation of clothes, words, and desires that turns base appetites into spendable coin. The laughter stings because the cheats are agile, but the cheated are eager collaborators in their own undoing.