Comment on "The Alchemist" as a comedy. The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. First performed in 1610 by the King's Men, it is generally considered Jonson's best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature. The play's clever fulfillment of the classical unities and vivid depiction of human folly have made it one of the few Renaissance plays excepting of course the works of Shakespeare with, apart from a period of neglect during the Victorian era, a continual life on stage. The Alchemist focuses on what happens when one human being seeks advantage over another. In a big city like London, this process of advantage-seeking is rife. The trio of con-artists - Subtle, Face and Dol - are self-deluding small-timers, ultimately undone by the same human weaknesses they exploit in their victims. Their fate is foreshadowed in the play's opening scene, which features them together in the house of Lovewit, Face's master. In a metaphor which runs through the play, the dialogue shows them to exist in uneasy imbalance, like alchemical elements that will create an unstable reaction. Barely ten lines into the text, Face and Subtle's quarrelling forces Dol to quell their raised voices: "Will you have the neighbours hear you? Will you betray all?" The Alchemist is tightly structured, based around a simple dramatic concept. Subtle claims to be on the verge of 'projection' in his offstage workroom, but all the characters in the play are overly-concerned with projection of a different kind: image-projection. The end result, in structural terms, is an onstage base of operations in Friars, to which can be brought a succession of unconsciously-comic characters from different social backgrounds, who hold different professions and different beliefs, but whose lowest common denominator - gullibility - grants them equal victim-status in the end. Dapper, the aspirant gambler, loses his stake; Sir Epicure Mammon loses his money and his dignity; Drugger, the would-be businessman, parts with his cash, but ends up no nearer to the success he craves; the Puritan duo, Tribulation and Ananias, never realize their scheme to counterfeit Dutch money. Jonson reserves his harshest satire for these Puritan characters--perhaps because the Puritans, in real life, wished to close down the theaters. (Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair is also anti-Puritan.) Tellingly, of all those gulled in the play, it is the Puritans alone whom Johnson denies a brief moment of his audience's pity; presumably, he reckons their life-denying self-righteousness renders them unworthy of it. Jonson consistently despises hypocrisy, especially religious hypocrisy that couches its damning judgments in high-flown language. Tribulation and Ananias call their fellow men "heathens" and in one case, say that someone's hat suggests "the Anti-Christ." That these Puritans are just as money-hungry as the rest of the characters is part of the ironic joke. In many English and European comedies, it is up to a high-class character to resolve the confusion that has been caused by lower-class characters. In The Alchemist, Jonson subverts this tradition. Face's master, Lovewit, at first seems to assert his social and ethical superiority to put matters to rights. But when Face dangles before him the prospect of marriage to a younger woman, his master eagerly accepts. Both master and servant are always on the lookout for how to get ahead in life, regardless of ethical boundaries. Lovewit adroitly exploits Mammon's reluctance to obtain legal certification of his folly to hold on to the old man's money.
Alchemist is a:
(a) Sentiment comedy
(b) Romantic comedy
(c) Realistic comedy
(d) Tragy comedy
Not really. Its more of an action type anime, their isn't really too much romance in the show.
no it's a type of anime
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 Jonson's major innovations. The Alchemist is basically a comedy of humours even though it does not contain such a variety of humours as in Jonson's 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.
Puolo Coulho
Old Comedy - comedy about political satire New Comedy - comedy that deviates away from political satire and makes fun of everyday family life
a comedy :)
The Comedy of Errors, The Tempest and Macbeth in that order.
Full Metal Alchemist which has 51 episodes , Full Metal Alchemist : Brotherhood which has 63 episodes , Inuyasha has 167 episodes and Sgt. Frog has 358 episodes .
No such alchemist.
The correct spelling is the alchemist. There are two moves on the alchemist called The Alchemist, an American movie, and the Fullmetal Alchemist, a Japanese manga series.
The alchemist tried to change lead into gold. He studied years to become an alchemist.
It is Fullmetal Alchemist really it should not be FMA it should be FA.
The cast of The Alchemist - 1913 includes: Murdock MacQuarrie as The Alchemist
"An Alchemist's Anguish"
The Alchemist - novel - was created in 1988.
PARTICULARS
Do you think at http://chemweb.com/alchemist-current?
The Alchemist (novel) was written by Paulo Coelho .
The Alchemist's Question was created in 1984.