Ben Jonson was born in 1572, and though capable of attending Oxford or Cambridge was briefly apprenticed to his step-father as a bricklayer. Perhaps this humiliating experience gave him both his depth and fury of personality. He was one the great wits of his day. His comedy The Alchemist was performed at the Globe, the theatre in London made famous by his contemporary, Shakespeare, in 1610. 

He remains one of the great playwrights of the English literary canon, but he is just as highly esteemed as a poet. The introduction to his ‘Song: for Celia’ is famous:

Drink to me, only, with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine,

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I’ll not look for wine.

 

The loss of two children, a girl at six months, and boy at 7 years, resulted in tender and outstanding epigrams; and Jonson wrote many other elegies and epitaphs. In his poem ‘To Sicknesse’, he writes: 

‘Pray thee, feed contented, then,

Sicknesse; onely on us men.

Or if needs thy lust will tast

Woman-kinde; devoure the wast

Livers, round about the townes.

But, forgive me, with thy crowne

They maintayne the truest trade,

And have more diseases made.

What should, yet, thy pallat please?

Daintinesse, and softer ease,

Sleeked limmes, and finest blood?

If thy leanenesse love such food,

There are those, that, for thy sake

Doe enough; and who would take

Any paines; yea, think it price,

to become thy sacrifice.

  

This Elizabethan English is not easy: try it again! Jonson is asking Sickness to leave women alone, and to afflict only men. But if sickness must attack women, it should pick on those who waste their lives in prostitution…oops, sorry, Sickness, I didn’t mean to insult the people who work so well on your behalf. Take then their opposite, the dainty women of leisure who would enjoy a good illness for society’s sake?

In ‘An Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet’, Jonson proposes a moralistic view of health promotion: 

Deare Vincemt Corbet, who so long

Had wrestled with Diseases strong,

That though they did possesse each limbe,

Yet he broke them, e’re they could him,

With the just Canon of his life,

A life that knew nor noise, nor strife:

But was by sweetning so his will,

All order, and Disposure, still.

His mind as pure, and neatly kept,

As were his Nourceries, and swept

So of uncleannesse, or offence,

That never came ill odour thence:

 

The Alchemist 

Typically, Jonson’s characters have facetious names. Subtle is dressed as a Doctor of Alchemy; his partners in crime are Face, a spruiker, and Dol Common, a whore. They are cozening (conning) Sir Epicure Mammon and others out of their money by pretending to make various alchemical preparations. Pertinax Surly is Mammon’s protector, and does not believe the Doctor and his companions. Jonson researched contemporary practices to write his play, which is presented with tremendous humour and vitality, and ends with the downfall of the conniving charlatans. He has given us an unparalleled insight into an aspect of health practice in Elizabethan England. 

Subtle, Face, and Dol Common are about tricking people who are rich, gullible, and vain out of their money. They are operating from the house Face’s master has left because the plague is in London again. They have Metoposcopy, Chiromancy, and Alchemy: 

SUBTLE: The thumb, in Chiromancy, we give Venus;

The forefinger to Jove; the midst to Saturn;

The ring to Sol; the least to Mercury,

who was the Lord, sir, of his horoscope,            I iii 53-7

 

The Doctor can create familiar spirits that bestow good fortune on gamblers; and is making a Philosopher’s Stone for Sir Epicure Mammon. Just before the ‘projection’ of the final qualities into the stone a tobacconist called Drugger comes in to consult the almanac (similar to a horoscope): 

DRUGGER: I would entreat

another favour of his worship.

FACE: What is’t, Nab?

DRUGGER: But to look over, sir, my almanac

            And cross out my ill-days, that I may neither

Bargain, nor trust upon them.                I iii 91-5 

 

In Act II Pertinax Surly and Sir Mammon come for the philosophers stone, but are put off with alchemical mumbo jumbo for another week, and asked for more coins and metals to keep the transmutation process going. Subtle warns Mammon, who is gullible enough to believe he has a copy of ‘a treatise penned by Adam- o’the Philosopher’s Stone, and in High Dutch’, that the Stone must be put only to pious uses. Surly can see through them, but to no effect: 

SURLY: …sir, I’ll believe

            That Alchemy is a pretty kind of game,

Somewhat like tricks o’ the cards, to cheat a man

With charming.

SUBTLE: Sir?

SURLY: What else are all your terms,

            Whereon no one o’ your writers ‘grees with other?

            Of your elixir, your lac virginis,

Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury,

Your oil of height, your Tree of Life, your blood,

Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia,

Your Toad, your Crow, your Dragon, and your Panther,

Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop,

Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,

And then your red man, and your white woman,

With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials

Of piss and egg-shells, women’s terms, man’s blood,

Hair o’ the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay,

Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,

And worlds of other strange ingredients

Would burst a man to name?

 

SURLY: ‘Heart, this is a bawdy house! I’ll be burnt else.

MAMMOM: O, by this light, no! Do not wrong him. He’s

Too scrupulous that way. It is his vice.

No, he’s a rare physician, do him right.

An excellent Paracelsian! And has done

Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all

With spirits, he. He will not hear a word

Of Galen, or his tedious recipes.

 

In Act III Ananias, a zealot, needs some money for his church, and is shy of transgression. Brother Tribulation Wholesome encourages him to meet Subtle, all in a good cause: 

ANANIAS: ‘He bears

The visible mark of the Beast on his forehead.

And for his stone, it is a work of darkness,

And with his philosophy blinds the eyes of man

TRIBULATION WHOLESOME: Good Brother, we must bend unto all means

            That may give furtherance to the Holy Cause.

ANANIAS: Which his cannot. The Sanctified Cause

Should have a sanctified course.

…

SUBTLE: ..even the medicinal use shall make you a faction

And party to the realm? As, put the case,

That some great man in state, he have the gout,

Why, you but send three drops of your elixir,

You help him straight. There you have made a friend.

Another has the palsy or the dropsy,

He takes of your incombustible stuff,

He’s young again: there you have made a friend.

A lady that is past the feat of body,

Though not of mind, and hath her face decayed

Beyond all cure of paintings, you restore

With the Oil of Talc. There you have made a friend.

And all her friends.

TRIBULATION: It is an ignorant zeal that haunts him, sir,

But truly else a very faithful Brother,

A botcher, and a man by revelation

That hath a competent knowledge of the truth.

 

Finally, the owner of the house, Lovewit, turns up unexpectedly and the whole scam collapses in infamy.  

SURLY: Or, he is the Faustus,

That casteth figures and can conjure, cures

Plagues, piles and pox…

 

Face tries to explain away the crowd when Lovewit invokes the name of a psychiatric facility so notorious it’s name has entered the English language. But there are aristocrats present who should not be offended: 

LOVEWIT: The world’s turned Bedlam.

FACE: These are all broke loose,

Out of St. Katherine’s, where they used to keep

The better sort of mad-folks.

To think about: How common do you think medical charlatanism is in contemporary Australia? How would you define it? How would you deal with it if you were a politician?

                        Who was Paracelsus?

Dr Faustus 

This play was written by Christopher Marlowe, the first of the great Elizabethan dramatists, the man who with The Jew of Malta created the first character play. Prior to this all stage drama was re-enactment of traditional, often religious, stories. Dr Faustus was brilliantly written but in the former mould: the tale of the alchemical doctor who sells his soul for total knowledge, which brings him total power, but is dragged down to hell at the appointed hour, came out of the forests of dark age Germany. Goethe, Germany’s great 19^th century playwright, also tackled the story.

References and Further Reading 

Hollander J (ed.) (1961) Ben Jonson  The Laurel Poetry Series  Dell 

Jamieson M (ed.) (1966) Ben Jonson: Three Comedies   Penguin English Library 

Marlowe, C  Dr Faustus            Mermaid 

Goethe Faust            Penguin Classics