Week Eight: What's in a Name?

All of the characters in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist have what might be considered odd names. Each individual listed in the play’s dramatis personae seems to be named after the personality trait that best characterizes him or her and bears some correlation to his or her particular role in the play.

As an example, let us examine Sir Epicure Mammon. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “epicure” refers to an individual “who gives himself up to sensual pleasure” or “is choice and dainty in eating and drinking” (OED), and “mammon” means an “inordinate desire for wealth or possessions, personified as a devil or demonic agent” (OED). In the play, the character Mammon comes across as a very covetous fellow whose purpose in visiting Subtle (whom he believes to be an alchemist) is to transform what he owns into something far more valuable in an effort to satiate his cupidity: “This night I’ll change/ All that is metal in my house to gold” (Alchemist II.i.29-30).

Jonson may have used this unique technique as a vehicle for depersonalization. In a sense, the names of the characters in the play do not refer to specific individuals, but rather to general characterizations of the various types of people one might encounter in the London of Jonson’s day. The play, therefore, is not as much an analysis of one particular group of knaves and their deceitfulness as it is a commentary on the behaviors of the diverse occupants of Renaissance London. Essentially, Jonson’s play serves to scrutinize a society. Do you agree or disagree with this assertion? If you agree with it, how might this sense of depersonalization differentiate the London of Jonson from that of Thomas Dekker in The Shoemaker’s Holiday?