The Alchemist as a Plague Comedy: A Conversation with Kay Daly

Philip Rowe (0:10)

Welcome to The History Of European Theatre podcast, and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 235, The Alchemist as a Plague Comedy, a conversation with Kay Daly.

Last time I took a first look at The Alchemist, where Ben Jonson mixed farcical comedy with satire and more serious commentary on the society of the 1610s. The play is notable, among other things, for having the time of plague as its setting. It is, I think, the only play from that time to do this in any significant way. And that was the jumping off point for my conversation with Kay Daly, who makes a welcome return to the podcast after having previously discussed Shakespeare's and Jonson's world view with me. Those episodes are still out there on the podcast archive, and I think well worth a listen if you haven't done so already. Kay Daly is a writer, novelist, book and theatre reviewer, teacher and public humanities advocate. Since earning her Ph.D. in English Literature from Northwestern University, she has written for a variety of publications and organizations, including The Chicago Review of Books, TimeOut Chicago, The Metropolitan Opera, WNET New York Public Media, The Library of Virginia's blog UnCommonwealth, Dramatics Magazine, and Centerstage Chicago. She also teaches adult enrichment courses focusing on arts and humanities at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

And at the end of this episode, you can hear a bit about her debut novel, which is also concerned with the world of Ben Jonson and is due out in April 2027 I spoke to Kay from her home in Chicago over a Zoom call. There is a view that there are no plague plays in early modern theatre, but surely The Alchemist has to be the significant exception to that.

Kay Daly (2:06)

Yeah, I would agree. And it's funny that you mentioned that, because I had just recently heard that in a podcast that was just dropped, like, oh, there are no plague plays. And I immediately thought, as you said, I think I actually said it out loud because I was walking with my little ear buds in, and I said, well, what about The Alchemist?

And I feel like people buzz right past that play as being a plague play. And I would suggest it's for two reasons. First of all, there's just the idea of a plague comedy is just such an unthinkable genre. I mean, if you mention like what would be your COVID comedy or what would be your AIDS comedy? Like these are just not things we imagine as modern people having experienced these societies that you could ever make light of in any way. So that's one reason I think that people kind of discount it. But the other one that I think is significance is that there are actually a lot of references to the plague that are woven about the play that we just don't catch as readers. There are references to cures and circumstances. And I think what happens instead is that the critical response tends to focus on what else the play is about. That if plague is there, it's really just a metaphor for other things. And I think that there is value to that reading. I'm not discounting that reading. There's the idea that theater is the plague and theatricality is the plague. And kind of an argument against playing while also in the context of playing, which is totally Jonsonian. He's always on a metal level, working with things.

The other reading that I've seen that I find personally utterly bizarre of, if you're going to read this as a plague play, that what it really is, is Jonson helping the audience heal over the trauma of the experience of the plague, which strikes me as so not Jonsonian as to be laughable. I mean, that's a Shakespeare move. That's a that's a we're all a community and let's laugh and let's heal together. And Jonson doesn't want people to heal together. Jonson wants people to know exactly what they're doing wrong and to be better.

Philip Rowe (4:35)

Yes.

Kay Daly (4:37)

Or at least be willing to be laughed at and mocked at for how wrong they are. So I find that reading entirely unconvincing. So I would say my point is that this play is about a lot of things and but plague is woven throughout and the real lived experience of the plague is actually in there. The fact is Jonson sets it. He decides to set it in his modern day, in where the play is actually being produced, when he didn't need to. Volpone is set in Italy.

So I think the point being he's made deliberate choices and it's, I think, a real blind spot to not factor in the idea that plague was a lived experience that he and his audience, particularly the audience of that first production in Blackfriars, where the play is set, as you've mentioned before, that that can't be discounted as a really important context for understanding this play.