The Alchemist And Greed Essay

identities, are comedically unable to slake their thirst for money, pushing it further and further with anyone they come in contact with who are no less greedy themselves. All characters who deal with Subtle in his role as the alchemist appear in their full naked greed. Mammon, Tribulation and Ananias are depicted as sinful, vice dominated hypocrites who are ruined by their immorality. Contrastingly, Dapper, Drugger and Kastril are more lightly depicted, exhibited as victims of folly rather than sin. Alchemy is both the focus of the play’s greed and corruption as well as the central metaphor throughout. “As the source of heat which distills the fools in the author’s dramatic cauldron, it also provides a well-known system of belief through

Mammon displays an overwhelmingly lustful disposition from the time he comes on the stage. His first speech extolls the advantages of wealth in attracting women, and further plans sexual gratification as his first purchase with the funds from the philosophers stone. After he is duped into believing that his lust has cost him his stone, he laments his greed, summarising the folly/punishment theme of the play as such; “O my voluptuous mind! I am justly punished.” (4.1) Mammon acts as a tabula rasa, existing for the pure purpose of exposing vice as an evil. Additionally, Ananias and Tribulation betray their ideals and discuss circumventing the law, counterfeiting money and defying their religious professions, thereby exposing the hypocrisy and greed of man, supporting Jonson’s motif of railing against Puritan Anabaptist teachings. Doll Common appears to be what she is not, pliant, acting as a foil to Dame Pliant, working with Subtle and Face, acting as brokers gaining from other character’s greed. Face knows his true identity as Jeremy the butler, while other characters, Doll and Subtle included, never seem to realise their own identities. The main knaves, the problematic protagonists, do not suffer the same sour end which many of the other characters do. Their major fault lies in their succumbing to visions of exalted status, each seeking to transcend their proper station and as such, are

A tenet of Elizabethan comedy was “the conclusion showing the rejection of vice and cherishing of virtue” - in place of such an ending, Jonson leaves us wondering who are the wicked and who are the virtuous. What’s vital to understand is this; in The Alchemist greed is not simply an emotion or theme, it acts as a character, an active and present agent. “The minor melodies base on the characters of the petty merchant, yokel from the country, the Puritan and the voluptuous aristocrat are all woven together, all unified by the major theme of