Commentary on The Alchemist as a Comedy of Humours. Essay

The comedy of humours pertains to a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on one or many eccentric characters, each of whom has one overriding trait or humour that dominates their personality and obssesses their mind. The comedy of humours was one of Jonsons major innovations. The Alchemist is basically a comedy of humours even though it does not contain such a variety of humours as in Jonsons earlier play, Every man in His Humour. In The Alchemist, Jonson concentrates mainly on greed which is the humour that dominates almost every character. Besides, the play presents lust as a humour through the character of Mammon. Hence, through a discussion of The Alchemist as a comedy of humours, I will also show how Jonson uses ridicule to teach people to keep their humours in check.

In The Alchemist, the humour of greed is presented as endemic in society almost all the characters display it. Subtle uses his excellent knowledge of alchemy in learned, scientific speech to fool people and amass money. Face goes about in order to shark foolish people like Drugger and Dapper, and Dol joins the two to rob people of as much money as possible. Those three conspirators are in fact the greediest. It is this very avarice that brings them into conspiring with each other to gull other greedy people.

Every other character shows their greed through their gullibility. I feel that this avarice comes as a disease from which the characters suffer. They are so covetous that they become ridiculous in our eyes. It is because of this very humour of rapacity that they end up in becoming so gullible. In believing Subtle, they dream of acquring riches. Dapper, for example, wishes to give up his profession and become a whole-time gambler with the sole aim of acquiring riches:

()He would have

(I told you of him) a familiar

To rifle with at horses, and win cups.

Finally, they all pay a heavy price due to their avarice. While Dapper, Drugger, Mammon, the two anabaptists, Kastril and Dame Pliant realise that they have been fooled and lost a lot of money, the conspirators punishment consists largely in their humiliating self-exposure.

Apart from greed, lust is also an interesting humour portrayed in The Alchemist. Mammon, besides greed, also represents another humour which is lust for limitless sexual pleasure. By acquiring the elixir, he wishes to, not only be wealthy but to possess a large harem of mistresses as well. Thus, through these characters representing humours, we could say that The Alchemist is a comedy of humours.

Comedies of humours are vehicles for satire, especially of materialistic society. In The Alchemist, through ridicule of excessive greed, Jonson felt that he could better men . In the same way as doctors attempted to provide medical treatments for the imbalance of humours, Jonson attempted to provide psychological treatment through ridicule.

In short, I can say that The Alchemist is a masterful piece of caricature, of biting satire of the society of the time and of timeless human humours. It is also, as Jonson believed, the most perfect expression of his theory of comedy and should be viewed as educative even today. After all, it would be naive to suggest that we, in our twenty first century sophistication, are beyond being gulled and have vanquished the enemy of greed from our balance of humours.

Reference

Primary Materials

-- Jonson, Ben, The Alchemist

-- Jonson, Ben, Every man in His Humour

Secondary Materials

-- Lall, Ramji, Ben Jonson: The Alchemist (New Delhi: Rama Brothers Educational Publishers, 2002)

-- Joseph, T., Ben Jonson: A Critical Study (New Delhi: Anmol, 2002)

Internet Sources

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Comedy of humours (2007), http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9041509 (22/11/07)

-- The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Alchemist1.html (22/11/07)