The Alchemist E-Book

Ben Jonson

• Herausgeber: Ben Jonson
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Fortune, that favours fools, these two short hours,We wish away, both for your sakes and ours,Judging spectators; and desire, in place,To the author justice, to ourselves but grace.Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known,No country's mirth is better than our own:No clime breeds better matter for your whore,Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more,Whose manners, now call'd humours, feed the stage;And which have still been subject for the rageOr spleen of comic writers. Though this penDid never aim to grieve, but better men;Howe'er the age he lives in doth endureThe vices that she breeds, above their cure.But when the wholesome remedies are sweet,And in their working gain and profit meet,He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased,But will with such fair correctives be pleased:For here he doth not fear who can apply.If there be any that will sit so nighUnto the stream, to look what it doth run,They shall find things, they'd think or wish were done;They are so natural follies, but so shewn,As even the doers may see, and yet not own.

Leseprobe

Ben Jonson

The Alchemist

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Table of contents

INTRODUCTION

TO THE READER.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

ARGUMENT.

PROLOGUE.

ACT 1. SCENE 1.1.

ACT 2. SCENE 2.1.

ACT 3. SCENE 3.1.

ACT 4. SCENE 4.1.

ACT 5. SCENE 5.1.

GLOSSARY

INTRODUCTION

The greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age.Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,"All that I am in arts, all that I know;"and dedicating his first dramatic success, "Every Man in His Humour," to him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though Fuller says that he was "statutably admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson told how "in his service in the Low Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia from him;" and how "since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt him in the arm and whose sword was ten inches longer than his." Jonson's reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly his prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative, and not averse to talking of himself and his doings.