The Alchemist Resources

According to this news article by scholar Andrew Hadfield, Jonson was "sharper, funnier, and more varied than the Bard."

All the dirt on the playwright, compliments of Luminarium.

This website is a little strange but there's a boatload of info on alchemy here.

This is good in a pinch but, alas, there are no nifty footnotes to help with all the alchemy jargon and 17th Century slang we encounter as we read the play. That said, there's a pretty detailed "glossary" tacked on at the end of the text.

You're welcome.

If you speak French, you're in luck. If not, your best hope is to catch a live performance of the play at a local theater.

Hmm. Good luck with this one, Shmoopers.

This site has a ton of links to the kinds of stuff that was floating around during the period Jonson wrote The Alchemist (1610).

Watching this video is like hanging out with your favorite English Prof during office hours.

This one's from The National Theater's 2007 production.

Compliments of LibriVox.

Just kidding. (They didn't really have mug shots back in the day when Jonson was running around getting tossed in the slammer for stabbing people and talking smack about Queen Elizabeth I's court.)

This is the theater where The Alchemist was probably first performed in 1610. The setting of the play, by the way, takes place in the same neighborhood.

This one's by the artist Robert Vaughan and it's not pretentious at all. (See, we can be just as sarcastic as Ben Jonson.)