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Jonson's Alchemist and the Literature of Alchemy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
No annotator of Jonson's play The Alchemist has looked very deeply into the mediæval and Renaissance alchemical treatises current in Jonson's day for material in illustration and explanation of the speeches in the alchemical episodes of the play. For the most part, it is true, alchemical lexicons are all that is needed to define specific terms and to indicate their relationship to the theories and practices of the alchemists. But certain of the speeches of the play take on a new and fuller meaning when read against a background of some knowledge of this body of alchemical literature.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 The explanatory notes in the Gifford-Cunningham edition, Works of Ben Jonson (London, 1875), iv, 1-182, which incorporate the earlier researches of Upton and Whalley, rely almost entirely on alchemical lexicons and dictionaries, with occasional glances at writings of the English alchemists Ripley and Norton. H. C. Hart's edition for the De La More Press (London, 1903) contains a glossary based on the same kinds of information, which defines some terms left unexplained or incorrectly explained by Gifford. The annotations and glossary in C. M. Hathaway's edition, Yale Studies in English, xvii (New York, 1903) are very full, but, except for an occasional reference to Paracelsus' writings and some use of the English treatises to be found in Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum, cite lexicons of alchemy (all post-dating Jonson's play) rather than the treatises Jonson could have known. No edition since Hathaway's has presented any new alchemical annotations. For Jonson's use of specific passages of the Rosarium of Arnold of Villa Nova cf. PQ, xxi (1942), 435-138.
2 For a discussion of one phase of Chaucer's knowledge of alchemy, see the present writer's “The Yeoman's Canon's Silver Citrinacioun,” Mod. Phil., xxxvii (1940), 241-262; and, for Donne, “Donne's Alchemical Figures,” ELH, ix (1942), 257-285.
3 Jonson makes a very different use of alchemical theories and jargon in a masque written in 1615. Cf. my “The Alchemy in Jonson's Mercury Vindicated,” SP, xxix (1942), 625-637.
4 All references to The Alchemist give the scene and line numberings of the Herford and Simpson edition, Works of Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1925-1937), v, 273-408.
5 Paracelsus, Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of … Paracelsus, ed. by A. E. Waite (London, 1894), i, 42, n. Of course, only Subtle would need to know whether or not the materials for producing thunder are actually in the vial.
6 Speculum Naturale, Lib viii, Cap lxxxix. In a book reputedly by “Alphonso, King of Portugall” which was translated into English in 1592 we find: “… but the moist fire they call the hot, venter Equinus, which may be Englished, the Horse belly; but rather it is Horse dung, wherein remaining moystness, there doth remain heat.” (Quoted from Read, Prelude to Chemistry, pp. 144-145). Paracelsus (op. cit., i, 75) begins a listing of various kinds of heat, in ascending order of intensity, with venter equinus.
7 From Bloomefield's Blossoms or The Campe of Philosophie, as printed in Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum (1652) pp. 305-324. William Bloomefield was a “phylosopher and bacheler of phisyke, admytted by King Henrie VIII,” according to a note in an eighteenth-century alchemical MS. (W. J. Wilson, Osiris, vi, 566). Cf. also Ashmole's note, op. cit., p. 478. I have used the Huntington Library copy of Ashmole's now rare collection.
8 Ripley's Compound, “Of Sublymacyon. The eighth Gate” (Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, p. 172):
And Sublymacyon we make for causys three,
The fyrst cause ys to make the Body Spirituall;
The second that the Spyrt may Corporall be, …
The Thyrd cause is that from hys fylth orygynall
He may be clensyd …
“Of Exaltation. The tenth Gate” (Ibid., p. 178):
Ower Medycyn yf we Exalt ryght so,
Hyt shall therby be Nobylyzate …
9 Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, p. 188.
10 Cf. PQ, xxi (1942), pp. 435-436.
11 Paracelsus, op. cit., i, 24.
12 Dorothy Waley Singer, Catalogue of … Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland (Brussels, 1928-31), i, 9-10, 125-126.
13 From the Worke of Rich. Carpenter (Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, p. 277). Hathaway quotes these lines in illustrating this passage (op. cit., p. 275.)
14 Singer, op., cit., i, 8, 131; ii, 711. Herford and Simpson (op. cit., i, 262) list among the books bearing Jonson's motto and autograph “Saloman, King of Israel, Opus de arte magica, ab Honorio ordinatum,” a fourteenth century MS. which, they say, is “analogous to Solomon's work on alchemy which Sir Epicure Mammon possessed.”
15 When the lexicographer Suidas mentioned it. Cf. G. De Givry, Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy (New York, 1931), p. 352.
16 The English translation of this work was published in 1624, “done into English out of The French and Latine Copies.”
17 Nicholas Flammel, His Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures . . . (London, 1624), p. 67.
18 Ibid., p. 106.
19 Benedictus Figulus, Pandora Magnalium naturalium aurea et benedicta, de benedicto lapidis philosophorum mysterio (Strasburg, 1608). This collection contains the earliest known printing of the Apocalypse of Hermes, a Paracelsian or pseudo-Paracelsian tract, to which, it seems to me, Jonson is indebted for the material utilized in the speeches in i, iv, 18-28; ii, i, 58-60; and iii, ii, 102-106. There is an English translation of the tract in Waite, op. cit., i, 23-26.
20 Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, p. 342.
21 Works (ed. R. W. Bond), ii, 444.
22 Englished by Ja[mes] San[ford?]. Gent. (London, 1569), f. 157r.
23 Dialogus veram & genuinam Librorum Gebri Sententiam explicans, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, ed. J. J. Magnet (Geneva, 1702), i, 567-597. The legend of Io is on p. 585; that of Demogorgon on p. 596. Pythagoras' golden thigh is thus referred to in the English translation of M. Dacier's Life of Pythagoras (London, 1707), p. 69: “They say that to make men believe he was the Hyperborean Apollo, he shew'd one of his Thighs all of Gold in a full Assembly at the Olympick Games.” I have found no reference to this precious member in alchemic literature.
24 Jonson used the description of this process given in Arnold of Villa Nova's Rosarium, his language being in places a quite literal translation of the Latin text. Cf. PQ, xxi (1942), 436-438.
25 Paracelsus, op. cit., i, 121.
26 Speculum Alchemiae, Cap. ii: “Sed dico quod natura semper proposuit, et contendit ad perfectionem auri. Sed accidentia diversa supervenientia transformant metalla …” (Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, i, 613). An English translation of this treatise was published in 1597: The Mirror of Alchimy, Composed by the thrice famous and learned Fryer, Roger Bachon …, London: Ptd. for Richard Olive. There is a copy of this edition in the Huntington Library.
27 Aristotle, Meteorologica, trans. by E. W. Webster (Oxford, 1923), p. 378a.
28 Ibid., p. 384b.
29 On this adaptation of Aristotle to form the “sulphur-mercury hypothesis” see John Read, Prelude to Chemistry (London, 1936), pp. 17-21. Reference to “Meteorology iv” are of very frequent citation in alchemical treatises. Arnald's Rosarium, the Speculum Alchemiae, Robt. of York's Correctorium, Ripley's Compound, for example, all cite it.
30 Cf., e.g., Arnald's Rosarium: “… quia non potest fieri aurum nisi prius fuerit argentum: quoniam non est transitus de extremo ad extremum, nisi per medium.” (Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, i, 664).
31 Translated from Speculum Alchemiae, Cap V, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, i, 615.
32 Flamel, op. cit., p. 82.
33 A briefe Commentarie of Hortulanus the Philosopher, upon the Smaragdine Table of Hermes, of Alchimy, in the Mirror of Alchimy (London, 1597, pp. 20-21). The “philosophers golde” and “philosophers silver” of this passage, are, it appears, synonymous with sophic sulphur and sophic mercury, the “parents” of the metals. The New Chemical Light of Michael Sendivogius, a Polish alchemist and contemporary of Jonson, discusses the “seeds” of metals in relation to the sulphur-mercury theory; see The Hermetic Museum Restored and Enlarged, (London, 1893), ii, 94.
34 Ibid., p. 19. For a similar statement see Arnald's Rosarium, Lib. ii, cap. xxviii (Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, i, 675).
35 Paracelsus, op. cit., i, 122-125. Cf. also i, 134, 148.