The Alchemist: 2 Jonson's Comical Satire

2 Jonson's Comical Satire:
The Alchemist
The Alchemist is one of Jonson's finest comedies, arguably the
finest; it is also one of the funniest, and arguably the funniest. This
is not mere coincidence. In merit its only rivals are Volpone and
Bartholomew Fair and fortunately no judgement of Paris is
needed between them. Perhaps the bedroom scene of the first act
of Volpone is funnier than any single sequence in The Alchemist,
but in no other play does Jonson sustain comic tension so con·
tinuously or so consistently until the whole concatenation explodes
in Lovewit's good-humoured denouement. 1 Critics who see the
ending as pessimistic and cynical are surely committing the fault
Jonson himself implicitly acknowledged in Volpone in the address
to the Universities, 2 letting moral usurp the function of critical
judgement. The tone of the ending is unmistakably tolerant and
good-humoured, and, while this has important moral impli-
cations, it is principally the result of consistent comic logic, not of
ethical theory. We must understand the comic consistency before
we can draw the correct moral conclusions. If the comedy is
tolerant, however, it is not celebratory. Jonson is writing satire, as
he tells us clearly in the Prologue:
this pen
Did never aime to grieve, but better men;
How e'er the age he lives in doth endure
The vices that she breeds, above their cure.
But, when the wholsome remedies are sweet,
And in their working, gaine, and profit meet,
He hopes to find no spirit so much diseas'd
But will, with such faire correctives, be pleas'd. 3
The assumptions here are essentially optimistic, that vice is a kind

of disease which even in advanced cases is capable of cure, though
51
D. Farley-Hills, The Comic in Renaissance Comedy
© David Farley-Hills 1981
52 The Comic in Renaissance Comedy
sin is an essentially negative phenomenon, a falling-off from the

normal, healthy moral state and the underlying assumption is that
man in his rightful condition is essentially good and wholesome
(and perhaps non-comic). 4 The conception of the doctor-
dramatist assumed in the Prologue is also essentially a benevolent
and optimistic one: the dramatist not only hopes to restore the
abnormal to normality, but wishes to do so without pain or dis-
comfort; the aim is the Hora tian one of sweetening the medicine to
make the ingestion pleasurable. There is even a possible suggestion
in the last two lines of the Prologue (though they are ambiguous)
that the cure will be effected without the patients' realising what
has happened:
They are so naturall follies, but so showne,

As even the doers may see, and yet not owne.
The idea that the vices may after all be involuntary 'follies' would
almost seem to be viewing the foolish as victims of conditions for
which they are scarcely responsible. For all its local pessimism (the
age itself is particularly pernicious) the essential attitude of the
satirist is benevolent and reassuring and it assumes a rational con-
fidence not only that cures are possible, but that he can effect
them.
We do not necessarily have to accept Jonson's declared aims in
the Prologue of The A !chemist as an accurate account of what he
has in fact achieved in the play itself; writers frequently achieve
something different from their declared aim, Jonson not always
excepted. Yet here, at least, Jonson's declared aim seems to accord
with what we find in the play. Certainly the play mocks the
aspirations of a whole series of fools: the sensualist Sir Epicure
Mammon; the two aspirants to fashionable vice - Dapper, who
would be a card-sharper, and the wealthy Kastril, who wants to
be fashionably quarrelsome; the simple-minded Abel Drugger,
with his superstition; and the two fanatical and hypocritical
Anabaptists, Ananias and Tribulation wholesome. Here is
certainly the mockery of folly as the credulousness of each of these
victims of the intrigue is exploited. Even the structure of the play
centres on the exposure of these figures, the plot consisting largely
of their being tricked one by one into giving up their wealth or
possessions for illusory gains, to find themselves poorer and per-
haps in some cases wiser at the end of the play. These characters

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2 Jonson's Comical Satire:

The assumptions here are essentially optimistic, that vice is a kind

sin is an essentially negative phenomenon, a falling-off from the

They are so naturall follies, but so showne,

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