The Alchemist was an exposure of quackery, and is one of his best comedies, but somewhat overweighted with learning.

All the poets were beggars; all alchemists and all philosophers are beggars.

In plot and artistic construction The Alchemist is an almost perfect specimen of the best English drama.

The Alchemist is a study of quackery on one side and of gullibility on the other, founded on the mediæval idea of the philosopher's stone, and applies as well to the patent medicines and get-rich-quick schemes of our day as to the peculiar forms of quackery with which Jonson was more familiar.