Three con artists run a fraudulent alchemy racket out of a London house while the master is away. Jonson's fast, intricate comedy of gulls and swindlers.
Books mentioned in The Alchemist (4)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “It is my humour: you are a pimp and a trig, And an Amadis de Gaul, or a Don Quixote.”
Amadis de Gaul by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo: “It is my humour: you are a pimp and a trig, And an Amadis de Gaul, or a Don Quixote.”
A Thousand and One Nights: ““It looks like A Thousand and One Nights,” said the Englishman, impatient to meet with the alchemist.”
The Emerald Tablet by Hermes Trismegistus: ““It’s the Emerald Tablet,” said the Englishman, proud that he might teach something to the boy. ... “What was written on the Emerald Tablet?” the boy wanted to know. — accepted at low confidence despite being a legendary/traditional Hermetic text rather than an ordinary book: the narrative treats it repeatedly as a specific, real, named…”
Books that mention The Alchemist (4)
The Antiquary by Walter Scott: “--And this Doctor, Your sooty smoky-bearded compeer, he Will close you so much gold in a bolt's head, And, on a turn, convey in the stead another With sublimed mercury, that shall burst i' the heat, And all fly out in fumo.-- The Alchemist.”
Old Mortality by Walter Scott: “Tribulation. You must await his calling, and the coming Of the good spirit. You did ill to upbraid him. The Alchemist.”
Kenilworth by Walter Scott: “Will come in time to be a great distiller, And give a say (I will not say directly, But very near) at the philosopher's stone. THE ALCHEMIST.”
The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth: “Listed among classic works his college humanities teacher taught 'like holy books' alongside The Poetics, King Lear, and The Oresteia — the Jacobean comedy, not the later Coelho novel (chronologically impossible for a 1949 college course)”