The Alchemist

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1612. The Alchemist was acted in 1610 and first published in 1612 in quarto. There were no other quarto editions and the play next appeared considerably revised by the author in the corrected folio of 1616. A few more corrections are to be found in the second folio which was published in 1640, four years after Jonson's death. They are the work either of Jonson himself or of Sir Kenhelm Digby. The British Museum copy of the first edition is here reproduced.

Jonson was a classically educated, well-read, and cultured English Renaissance man with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual), and his cultural influence was unparalleled on the playwrights and poets of the Jacobean and Caroline eras (1603-1625 and 1625-1642, respectively). In midlife, Jonson stated that his paternal grandfather, who "served King Henry 8 and was a gentleman, " was a member of the extended Johnston family of Annandale in Dumfries and Galloway, a genealogy supported by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family coat of arms, one of which is a diamond-shaped heraldic device used by the Johnston family. Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, and, as a Protestant, faced forfeiture under Queen Mary. He became a clergyman after his release and died a month before his son was born. His widow married a master bricklayer two years later. Jonson attended school in St Martin's Lane, London. Later, a family friend paid for his education at Westminster School, where he studied under William Camden (1551-1623), an antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms.