What were some of Ben Jonson's contributions comedy, especially in his play The Alchemist?

Ben Jonson, who lived during the time of Shakespeare and
who was both Shakespeare’s friend and friendly rival, was one of the great innovators in
English dramatic comedy. Whereas Shakespeare’s best-known comedies are romantic,
lyrical, playful, and celebratory, Jonson’s best-known comic dramas tend to be satirical
and sometimes biting as they mock human sinfulness and folly. Certainly this is true of
The Alchemist, in which Jonson mocks human greed, self-indulgence,
and deceitfulness. This play’s contributions to comedy include the
following:

• A London setting, making this one of the most
important of all the “city comedies” produced during the reign of King James I (the
so-called “Jacobean” period).

• A contemporary setting,
making the events of the play directly relevant to the lives of its original
spectators.

• A trio of comic deceivers (Face, Subtle, and
Doll) who take advantage of the various fools they prey upon but whose own relationship
is riven with tensions rooted in individual
self-interest.

• A variety of ridiculous gulls, each of
whom is motived by his own peculiar obsessions or selfish
desires.

• Mockery of the religious hypocrisy of Puritans –
always a favorite target of Jonson’s satire.

• An
increasingly complicated plot that often threatens to spin out of the control of the
trio of plotters. They must constantly improvise, so that the play is both comic and
suspenseful.

• Rich, racy, bawdy, colloquial, but sometimes
also arcane language and prose, so that we sense that we are really listening to the
ways Londoners spoke during Jonson’s day. Consider, for example, the play's opening
lines:

Face.
Believe 't, I will.
Subtle. Thy worst. I fart at thee.
Dol. Have you
your wits? why, gentlemen! for love -
Face. Sirrah, I'll strip you... out of
all your sleights.
Dol. Nay, look ye, sovereign, general, are you
mad-men?
Subtle. O, let the wild sheep loose. I'll gum your
silks
With good strong water, an you
come.

• Highly eccentric and
bizarre characters, such as Sir Epicure Mammon, who is one of the most striking and
memorable characters in all the dramas of this period.

•
Satire that not only mocks the fools on stage but also implicates (indirectly) the
foolishness of the spectators, so that when we laugh at the ridiculous antics of the
characters we must ask ourselves if we recognize some of our own moral
flaws.

• An ending that is (as Jonson’s endings often are)
teasingly ambiguous, especially in the presentation of the “happy” resolution to all the
many complications that have come before.