The Alchemist Ben Jonson - The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. It is generally considered Jonsons best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature. The plays clever fulfilment of the classical unities and vivid depiction of human folly have made it one of the few Renaissance plays (except the works of Shakespeare) with a continuing life on stage, apart from a period of neglect during the Victorian era.