general plan of the intriguers against the victims. Similar motives. actuate all. One comic tone pervades all. Each intrigue contributes its force to the idea of the whole. The suspense as to the general issue is constantly increasing. The effect is that which would be produced by a series of causally related tricks, piled up by a single intriguer upon a single victim. Moreover, although never welded into one, the intrigues are so linked together in certain scenes that their effect is cumulative. In II. i-iii, Mammon, the prince of victims, is grouped with Surly, the unique sceptic of the play. In III. iv, are grouped four of the victims; in IV. vii, six of them.1 Thus the close association of the gulls, each in the talons of the vulturous plotters, and the imminent danger of a concerted turning of captives upon captors lend to the whole the impression of a single complicated action. The plot of The Alchemist, with its group of distinct actions, has been cited as an example of the radical difference in structure existing between the plot of comedy and that of the typical tragedy. It is true that we have here not the single tragic conflict of two strong opposing forces in action and reaction, rise and fall. Surly alone of all the victims shows anything that may be termed reaction against the victimizers. The resolution of the play is brought about by a force from without. Lovewit, the master of the house, returns to overthrow the plotters. But, after all, is this resolution in effect different from that of tragedy? In the structure of The Alchemist we have a rising action in which the arch-plotters act against their victims. This is followed by a falling action in which the arch-plotters are acted upon. The return of Lovewit is the turning point. In the first part of the play the intriguers meet no obstacle but Surly. They reach the height of their power when they overthrow him. But note their position. We feel that they are at the end of their resources. The combined demands of the victims are becoming too strong. The tense strain of action toward a single effect demands a sudden break or a reaction. As in tragedy we have the reaction. The fact that those who react in the second part of the play are not the victims of the first part does not make the logical structure essentially different from that of tragedy. 1 See also V. iii, V. iv, V. v. The essential point, the same in each case, is that the action of the first part necessitates the reaction of the second. The difference between the plot of The Alchemist and the plot of tragedy is not a difference of logical structure. It is simply a difference of attitude toward life. Tragedy treats of characters and events seriously, under the inexorable domination of the law of fate, while comedy treats of characters and events humorously, under the exorable adjustment of social conventions. We may expect in mere adjustment a certain weakness and freedom unreconcilable with the idea of law. The resolution of The Alchemist is weak perhaps in introducing a force from without. But it is not so weak as is implied in the bare statement of this fact. Lovewit has not appeared in the first part of the play. His coming, however, has been well prepared for. Throughout the action has been lurking ever the danger of the return of the master. In fact the plotters are opposing him rather than their victims. They are expecting opposition in return from him rather than from their victims. And the resolution is conducted rather freely. It involves the shifting of Face from the side of the plotters to the side of Lovewit. It is unconventional in that Face is rewarded in the end, while the other plotters and their victims are punished. But we accept the success of Face without compunction-first, because Subtle and Doll are planning to desert him and make away with his share of the plunder; and second, because, like the tricky slave of Latin comedy, Face deserves a reward for the delight which he has afforded the audience by the cleverness of his humorous villainy. Date. The Alchemist was completed before October 3rd, 1610, since on that date it was entered in the Stationers' Register. And there is evidence which shows that it was not written before the year 1610, when it was first acted. In II. vi, 31, Drugger says that Dame Pliant is but nineteen at the most. Then in IV. iv, 29-30, Dame Pliant states : Never, sin eighty-eight could I abide 'hem, And that was some three yeere afore I was borne, in truth. Born in 1591, she was nineteen in 1610. Jonson's care in matters of this kind justifies us in accepting 1610 as the date of composition. Furthermore, the play was almost certainly written during the plague season. The first lines of the Argument indicate that the triumvirate of tricksters was formed in plague time. Face refers to the formation of the triumvirate as less than two months before the time of the play (III. iv, 46), and the words of Mammon show that operations have been going on for five weeks (V. v, 61). Then, Ananias speaks of the second day of the fourth week in the eighth month. This would be October 24, the date on which Jonson probably expected the play to be staged. October 24 would be nine days before the beginning of the Michaelmas term (November 2-November 25), the rich opportunties of which the conspirators are anxious not to lose (I. i, 139). Now the plague season in 1610 extended from July 12 to November 22. Hence, if Jonson placed the time of the action at October 24, he must have written the play after the beginning of the plague, July 12, 1610. That he did place the action at about October 24 is made more probable by the statement that the Magisterium will be perfected in about fifteen days, on the second day of the third week in the ninth month (III. ii, 129-132), or November 17-twenty-four days in fact. And that the play was written after the beginning of the plague, when the theatres were closed, is made more probable by Sur. I'll undertake, withall, to fright the plague And I'll Be bound the players shall sing your praises, then, and by references to the plague as still existing at the end of the play (IV. vii, 115-117; V. v, 31-35). The Alchemist was, accordingly, composed before October 3 and in all probability after August 1, 1610.1 Sources. Much in The Alchemist is reminiscent of events in the lives of John Dee, Simon Forman, and Edward Kelley—their doings in the fields of alchemy, astrology, and other sorts of magic. These men served to a certain extent as models for Subtle and Face. The 1 For further details see Fleay, Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, I, 375-376 and Hathaway, The Alchemist, Intro. 12-15. literary web is enriched with classical allusions and with borrowings from English and Latin works on alchemy too frequent to be mentioned here.1 The plot contains three scenes which may have been suggested by the Mostellaria and the Poenulus of Plautus. In the opening scene the quarrel of Subtle, Face, and Dol, which serves to impart information about the initial situation, savours of the device at the beginning of the Mostellaria, where the quarrel of the two slaves, Tranio and Grumio, serves the same function. The grounds and the words of the quarrels, however, have nothing in common. The return of Lovewit at the beginning of the fifth act of The Alchemist resembles the return of Theuropides in the Mostellaria. Theuropides is kept at bay by the salve Tranio, who states that the house is haunted. In two details the resemblance is close. The words of Face, "Nothing's more wretched, then a guiltie conscience" (V. ii, 47), correspond exactly to those of Tranio, "Nihil est miserius quam animus hominis conscius." And in each play, when those who are within the house make a noise, the plotter attributes it to a spirit and goes to the door to warn his fellows to be silent. But here again, while the general device and some of the details are the same, the subject-matter, the characters, and the lines have little in common. Finally, the device of having Surly speak a language which is not understood by the others is the same as that used by Plautus for the character of Hanno in the Poenulus, but the trick had become a stage property among the Elizabethans.2 A somewhat more definite source was claimed for The Alchemist a few years ago, by Clarence G. Child, in Il Candelaio of Giordano Bruno. According to Child's view, the two dupes of the Italian play, Bonifacio and Bartholomeo, who represent respectively greed for gold, and lust for pleasure, are unified by Jonson in Sir Epicure Mammon; and the two sharpers, Scaramuré, the magician, and Cencio the alchemist, are unified in Subtle. The arch-rascal Sanguino and the procuress Lucia are the prototypes of Face and Dol Common. One instance of the close relation between the two plays is the fact that in Il Candelaio, "Giovan Bernado, the painter, who represents intelligence and common sense, indicts Cencio, the See the notes in the editions of Hathaway and Schelling. 2 See Hathaway, Intro. 90-103. pretended alchemist, as fraudulent, just as Surly indicts Subtle in Jonson's play. When challenged to explain the transformation of other metals to gold, both make use of the same explanation in the same manner.' "1 The resemblances are manifest. But the professed explanation of their method was commonplace among the alchemists; and the structure of Jonson's plot, the treatment of his characters and the introduction of intrigues bear no essential relation to the Italian. Although the lives of certain magicians furnished Jonson with ideas, although the classics and the works on alchemy furnished allusions, although the comedies of Plautus furnished devices and a few details, and although the play of Bruno furnished suggestions for characters and for incidents of the plot, there is so much in The Alchemist which is Jonson's own that we cannot speak of a source of the play in the strict sense of that term. The Present Text.-The first edition of The Alchemist, the quarto of 1612 (Q), gives a satisfactory text. It differs but little from the folio of 1616 (F1), which had the advantage of Jonson's supervision. The folio of 1640 (F2) modernizes the spelling, although not uniformly, and corrects a few evident errors of the folio of 1616; but on the whole the former is merely a careless reprint of the latter. The editions of 1692 and of 1717 are reprints of the folio of 1640. The texts of Whalley, 1756, and Gifford, 1816, which purport to be critical, are vitiated by the freedom of the editors in emending without comment and in failing to note variants. Most of the later editions slavishly reprinted Gifford's text. There was no scholarly edition of The Alchemist until 1903, when were published the critical texts of Hathaway and Schelling. But even these admirable editions admit a few errors which the present edition has endeavoured to correct. In the preparation of the present text I have collated the copy of the folio of 1616 (F1) in the Sutro Library, San Francisco, with that of the folio of 1640 (F2) in the Library of the University of California. For variant readings of the quarto (Q) I have followed Hathaway and Schelling, since no copy of the imprint of 1612 is accessible to me. I have retained the punctuation, capitalizing, and 1 Nation, vol. 79, no. 2039, July 28, 1904, PP. 74-75. |