: Ben Jonson
: The Alchemist
: Phoemixx Classics Ebooks
: 9783986778552
: 1
: CHF 4.40
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: Geisteswissenschaften allgemein
: English
: 333
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The Alchemist Ben Jonson - The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. It is generally considered Jonsons best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature. The plays clever fulfilment of the classical unities and vivid depiction of human folly have made it one of the few Renaissance plays (except the works of Shakespeare) with a continuing life on stage, apart from a period of neglect during the Victorian era.

Benjamin 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.

Act 1. Scene 1.1.


 

A ROOM IN LOVEWIT'S HOUSE.

ENTER FACE, IN A CAPTAIN'S UNIFORM, WITH HIS SWORD DRAWN, AND SUBTLE WITH A VIAL, QUARRELLING, AND FOLLOWED BY DOL COMMON.

 

FACE. Believe 't, I will.
 

 

SUB. Thy worst. I fart at thee.
 

 

DOL. Have you your wits? why, gentlemen! for love—
 

 

FACE. Sirrah, I'll strip you—
 

 

SUB. What to do? lick figs
 

Out at my—
 

 

FACE. Rogue, rogue!—out of all your sleights.
 

 

DOL. Nay, look ye, sovereign, general, are you madmen?
 

 

SUB. O, let the wild sheep loose. I'll gum your silks
 

With good strong water, an you come.
 

 

DOL. Will you have
 

The neighbours hear you?will you betray all?
 

Hark! I hear somebody.
 

 

FACE. Sirrah—
 

 

SUB. I shall mar
 

All that the tailor has made, if you approach.
 

 

FACE. You most notorious whelp, you insolent slave,
 

Dare you do this?
 

 

SUB. Yes, faith; yes, faith.
 

 

FACE. Why, who
 

Am I, my mungrel? who am I?
 

 

SUB. I'll tell you.,
 

Since you know not yourself.
 

 

FACE. Speak lower, rogue.
 

 

SUB. Yes, you were once (time's not long past) the good,
 

Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum, that kept
 

Your master's worship's house here in the Friars,
 

For the vacations—
 

 

FACE. Will you be so loud?
 

 

SUB. Since, by my means, translated suburb-captain.
 

 

FACE. By your means, doctor dog!
 

 

SUB. Within man's memory,
 

All this I speak of.
 

 

FACE.Why, I pray you, have I
 

Been countenanced by you, or you by me?
 

Do but collect, sir, where I met you first.
 

 

SUB. I do not hear well.
 

 

FACE. Not of this, I think it.
 

But I shall put you in mind, sir;—at Pie-corner,
 

Taking your meal of steam in, from cooks' stalls,
 

Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk
 

Piteously costive, with your pinch'd-horn-nose,
 

And your complexion of the Roman wash,
 

Stuckfull of black and melancholic worms,
 

Like powder corns shot at th