Mammon's The Alchemist

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While The Alchemist might appear as though it is a play chastising both tricksters, Face, Subtle, and Doll Common, and their naïve victims, Abel Drugger, Sir Epicure Mammon, and the like, Jonson mainly critiques those who scoff at the duped. During the prologue of the play, Jonson criticizes those who, “are esteemed the more learned and sufficient for this by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment” (1.To the Reader.13-14). Surly, the skeptic of the play, demonstrates this type of person most clearly. However, in order to fully “better, men,” (1.Proluge. 12), Jonson must create a character that his readers will empathize with. What better character to accomplish this goal with than Mammon, of whom Subtle once remarked, that, “If …show more content…

Not his desires are admirable and should be emulated. As the play progresses, Mammon exposes himself for having selfish motives. In complicating Mammon, Jonson asks the reader whether they too desire to cure the general populace of disease, or only that they, personally, might be free of it? Would they use gold to prolong life or to bribe everyone they encounter, and lavish luxuries on themselves, like Mammon intended? These questions help the reader to investigate their own motives and in turn make them more self-aware as Mammon has become. Jonson’s ultimate goal with Mammon’s journey is completed in two different lines in the play. Answering for his ulterior selfish motives, as he begins to grasp the failure of his efforts with alchemy, he notes, “Oh, my voluptuous mind! I am justly punished”(4.5.83). Here, Jonson shows the reader the pitfalls of self-centered motives yet instead of ending the saga of chasing the dream on a negative note, Jonson has Mammon’s last line respond to Lovewit’s comment that he has suffered much. “Not I; the commonwealth has” (5.5.76). He still hasn’t completely abandoned the idea of creating a type of utopia for the common good and neither should the

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