“THE ALCHEMIST” AS A MORAL COMEDY PORTRAYING NATURAL FOLLIES; AN ANALYSIS OF BEN JONSON’S POETIC JUSTICE
Keywords:
Comedy, Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Natural follies, Poetic justiceAbstract
The Alchemist is an entertaining and hilarious comedy. According to Ben Jonson, the aim of his comedy was to “sport with human follies, not with crimes.” He tried to expose human follies to laughter with a purpose to rid people of these follies. Although the comedy is intended to entertain the audience, yet there is always a corrective purpose of it which has been properly taken care of by the author Richards, 1988. As the comedy helps the audience “to try to shed their follies and absurdities by making them laugh at those follies and absurdities,” this is also valid for his play “The Alchemist.” The paper, therefore, aims to highlight The Alchemist as a moral comedy which portrays natural follies in a typical Jonson’s poetic diction style.
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