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examine The Alchemist as a satire

Answer 1

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The Alchemist is a satiric comment on the real social conditions of its time. Comment.
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Asked on November 29, 2011 at 3:36 PM by pankaj68
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jlbh | College Teacher | (Level 2) Adjunct Educator
Posted on November 30, 2011 at 4:26 AM
First performed in 1610, Jonson's satire of human materialism was set in then contemporary London. There are therefore a great many characters and themes which the original audience would have recognised (probably with some discomfort, as very good satire is apt to produce.) Audiences would have been entirely familiar with:

1. The Plague. Attempts at control of this periodic epidemic meant that theatres in London were frequently closed during periods of high infection, and the play's first performance is recorded as taking place in Oxford in September 1610, when the London theatres had been closed since July. Everyone would have recognised the setting of The Alchemist: a city hit by plague restrictions regarding crowds and public gatherings, and from which everyone who could afford to move away did. That left the poor, and those whose businesses would have been robbed had they left them. Lovewit is a gentleman who has gone to the country, but his servants decide to remain in Town, risking infection in order to capitalise.

2. Social Mobility. This new Jacobean age had become very aware of the possibility of making money, and the social implication of successful trade and enterprise enabling the crossing of social divides which not long before had been regarded as insurmountable.The 'gulls' - the dupes who believe that they can get rich quick by magic - are also risking their lives, and are portrayed across the social spectrum: from the Knight to the failing tobacconist. Nobody is immune to greed and acquisition, but the Spaniard (impersonated by Surly) was a popular post-Reformation hate-figure, as were Puritans (represented here by the Anabaptists, an extreme Protestant sect who practised a sort of proto-communism) and who were notoriously anti-theatre. Within the context of the satire, the literal 'making' of money is the pivotal point.

Answer 2

The Alchemist is a social satire which transcends the Jacobean London period to our age.It represents a type of all practitioners of fraud. The hero and his confiderates personify the scientific challatan and solemn knave with his indispensable accomplice who will continue to flourish as long as nature is mysterious and mankind gullible. The play thus presents familiar situations and also the picture of the world turned upside down, a society motivated by folly and greed. There is a array of character following the same characteristics. If we decide on the society's point of view then the society is so moved by avarice that all moral standards are abandoned.