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 believed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature. The play cleverly fulfills the classical unities and vividly depicts human folly, making it one of the handful of Renaissance plays that sees continued life on the modern stage.
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π The Alchemist (play) in the context of Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 β 18 AugustΒ [O.S. 6 August]Β 1637) was an English playwright. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c.β1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. He is regarded as "the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."
Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual). His cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603β1625) and of the Caroline era (1625β1642).
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The Alchemist (play) in the context of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel. It is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels, in which Maugham ranks the ten best novels of the world.
The novel is highly organised despite its length. Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it has one of the "three most perfect plots ever planned", alongside Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and The Alchemist by Ben Jonson. It became a best-seller, with four editions published in its first year alone. It is generally regarded as Fielding's greatest book and as an influential English novel.
The Alchemist (play) in the context of Bartholomew Fair (play)
Bartholomew Fair is a Jacobean comedy in five acts by Ben Jonson. It was first staged on 31 October 1614 at the Hope Theatre by the Lady Elizabeth's Men company. Written four years after The Alchemist, five after EpicΕne, or the Silent Woman, and nine after Volpone, it is in some respects the most experimental of these plays.
The play was first printed in 1631, as part of a planned second volume of the first 1616 folio collection of Jonson's works, to be published by the bookseller Robert Allot; however, Jonson abandoned the plan when he became dissatisfied with the quality of the typesetting. Copies of the 1631 typecast were circulated, though whether they were sold publicly or distributed privately by Jonson is unclear. The play was published in the second folio of Jonson's works in 1640β41, published by Richard Meighen.
The Alchemist (play) in the context of Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor. He has played roles on the screen and stage in genres ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is regarded as a British cultural icon and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. He has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, six Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Emmy Awards.
McKellen made his stage debut in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre as a member of its repertory company, and in 1965 made his first West End appearance. In 1969, he was invited to join the Prospect Theatre Company to play the lead parts in Shakespeare's Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II. In the 1970s McKellen became a stalwart of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain. He has earned five Olivier Awards for his roles in Pillars of the Community (1977), The Alchemist (1978), Bent (1979), Wild Honey (1984), and Richard III (1995). McKellen made his Broadway debut in The Promise (1965). He went on to receive the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus (1980). He was further nominated for Ian McKellen: Acting Shakespeare (1984). He returned to Broadway in Wild Honey (1986), Dance of Death (1990), No Man's Land (2013), and Waiting for Godot (2013), the latter two being a joint production with Patrick Stewart.