The Alchemist

The end of The Alchemist reveals an analogy between the actions of the play and the practice of attending the theater. Jonson compares the ways in which customers are tricked by Face to the manner in which the audience is deceived by the performance on the stage. Face is a salesman who draws marks to Subtle with broad promises of supernatural wonder; Subtle impresses them with his magic, but he gives no actual product or service. The customers pay him anyway, believing in the amazing promise of performance. This same pattern recurs in the theater, where advertising draws in a crowd, the actors use words to simulate events and ideas, and the only reward for the audience is fleeting entertainment. Face underscores this analogy in his closing lines, which address the audience directly: Now that he has made money, he intends to “feast you often, and invite new guests” (352). The “feast” is the play itself, while the offer to “invite new guests” is the word-of-mouth advertising that Jonson hopes to get for the play.

In fact, Jonson’s “To the Reader” preamble confirms that this is the premise of the play, noting that his contemporaries are facing a sea of trickery: “[T]hou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays” (241). Just as these “pretenders” to understanding are most easily taken in by “dances” and “antics” in the real world, so too does Jonson intend to cozen the “pretenders” in the audience—those who come to the play for entertainment and socialization, as opposed to legitimate appreciation of art. In the play, the foolish marks cannot see through the deceptions of Face and his gang; so too do undiscerning audience members fail to pierce the veil of the play’s deception to the “feast” it offers—the moral lesson undergirding the satire. Jonson has thus put the audience into a bind: Those who admit that they do not understand the lesson are publicly identifying themselves as the “pretenders” who cannot discern quality, as he also notes in his prefatory letter to Lady Wroth. The play ends with a promise that its actors are happy to trick the audience again with a performance at any time, but that audience members should only pay for entertainment that provides a higher value. While Jonson claims to be working for the improvement of individual morals, the analogous relationship between deception and performance also aims to improve the culture of the theater overall.

Many of The Alchemist’s characters are unable to properly judge the character of other people or the value of the deals they are offered. Most commonly misjudged is Face, whose disguises fool everyone and who, as Jeremy the butler, is perceived to be so honest and trustworthy that Lovewit’s neighbors assume they are hallucinating when what they see conflicts with his story. Even Subtle and Dol trust Face to keep to an honor-among-thieves philosophy, misjudging his skill at trickery.

Jonson makes the idea of “quality” a motif from the start. Discussing the concept of literary quality in his letter to Mary Wroth, his “To the Reader” preface, and his Prologue, Jonson cautions his audience to be careful when appraising. His characters’ mistakes are often linked to a misperception of a person or agreement.

Mammon’s many judgment errors lead to his many losses. Unable to see through Face’s disguise as Subtle’s servant Ulen, Mammon falls for Face’s performatively obsequious act—most likely because Mammon’s own servant Surly is a grouchy malcontent and Mammon is jealous. Building on this misimpression, Mammon trusts Face/Ulen to arrange a meeting with Dol, whom Mammon has misjudged to be a vulnerable noblewoman. Rather than discerning Dol Common’s lowborn roots, Mammon is so taken with the idea of a wealthy wife with a mental illness, whom he can control and dispossess, that he instead finds in Dol a resemblance to “Austriac Princes,” “The house of Valois,” and the Medici family (308). Mammon is so caught up in his flights of fancy about Dol that he falls right into Face’s trap—his lust means that Subtle can blame the fact that there is no philosopher’s stone on Mammon.

Conversely, Face and Lovewit are excellent judges of character. Lovewit, in fact, benefits from his skill in appraising Jeremy and seeing Face’s qualities behind that mask; his astute ability to read his servant well enough to “be ruled by thee in anything, Jeremy” (352) leaves Lovewit with new wealth and a new wife. Lovewit’s love of wit has allowed him to see Face’s trickster nature—insight that makes Lovewit the true winner of the play.