Sense of humour failure

Coleridge deemed the narrative structure of The Alchemist perfect. But, I wonder. A landowner quits plague-ridden London and his cunning servants pose as learned sages in order to defraud affluent locals. Ben Jonson’s plotting is certainly adroit. The action takes place in a single location within the span of an afternoon, and this concentration of forces may have appealed to Coleridge’s idea of classical purity. What Jonson’s narrative doesn’t explain is why so many dim-witted toffs are kicking around in a city abandoned by all but its poorest inhabitants.

His characters’ names crassly signal their roles: Surly, Dapper, Lovewit, Sir Epicure Mammon. The chief villains, Subtle and Face, are assisted by Doll Common, whose vocation is self-evident, and in the early scenes their cheesy swindles are achieved with so little effort that one’s sympathy shifts away from the crooks and towards their prey. Which is not ideal. Jonson’s gallery of wealthy twerps seems stale to the modern eye: uppity monks, Spanish dandies, calculating apothecaries, aspiring duellists, mute virgins being touted for marriage by greedy relatives.