1 For three critics who are interested in the staging of Ben Jonson's plays, see Armstrong, William A., “Ben Jonson and Jacobean Stagecraft,” in Jacobean Theatre, ed. Brown, John Russell and Harris, Bernard (London: Edward Arnold, 1960), pp. 43–61Google Scholar; Flicker, Franz, Ben Jonson's Plays in Performance and the Jacobean Theatre (Bern: A. Franke, 1972)Google Scholar; Williams, Patrick R., “Ben Jonson's Satiric Choreography,” Renaissance Drama, ed. Barkan, Leonard, NS IX (1978), 121–145CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All deal with The Alchemist only briefly. Mares, F. H. in his introduction to his edition of The Alchemist (The Revel Plays, London: Methuen, 1967)Google Scholar discusses staging much more extensively than most editors.

2 Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), III, 123Google Scholar.

3 Herford, C. H., Percy, and Simpson, Evelyn, Ben Jonson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–1952), IX, 223Google Scholar.

4 Bentley, G. E., “Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre,” Shakespeare Survey, 1 (1948), 44Google Scholar.

5 See Beckerman, Bernard, Shakespeare at the Globe 1599–1609 (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1962)Google Scholar and King's, T. J. review of Smith's, IrwinShakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Its Design (N.Y.: New York University Press, 1964)Google Scholar in Renaissance Drama, ed. Schoenbaum, S., IX (1966), 291–309Google Scholar.

6 The diagram is for illustrative purposes only. To simplify my discussion I have incorporated the assumption made by some scholars that the doors of the stage were not on the same plane. Thus I can refer to the “upstage” door or “downstage” doors. Such a stage is more dynamic than one on which the doors are lined up on the same plane (and thus I like it better), but the text of the play and the argument in this paper do not require it. It is possible that the stage was even simpler than my diagram, that all three doors were on the back wall of the stage. It is also possible, though I think unlikely, that the window and door unit were not in the center position. Finally, the stage could also have been more complex than my diagram, as Irwin Smith's concept of the rear stage at Blackfriars would suggest. The point is that complexity is not necessary for the play.

7 III, ii, 162. All textual references to The Alchemist in this paper are to the edition in V of Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson.

8 For another example of a passage that implies the window is next to a door, see the end of III, iii. Dol informs the other rogues that Dapper is at the door. A moment later Face looks out the window and sees that Kastril has also arrived. There is no indication that Face mistrusts Dol and wants to check for himself. The glance out the window must be almost inadvertent, which is possible if the window is so close to the door that Face cannot help looking out of it as he begins to open the door. Subtle asks if the widow is with the new arrivals. “Not that I see” (84), responds Face. He speaks in the present tense, implying he is standing by the window. He is also at the door, for the line is completed by the order “Away” to Subtle and to the entering and bowing Dapper, “Osir, you are welcome” (84).

9 Smallwood, R. L., “‘Here, in the Friars’: Immediacy and Theatricality in The Alchemist,” Review of English Studies, NS XXXIII, no. 126 (1981), 147Google Scholar.

10 Primarily in IV when the house is full to capacity with characters who are immersed in their own fictions and who must not meet each other.

11 See Bentley's, G. E. edition of The Alchemist (Crofts Classics, Arlington Heights, Illinois: AHM, 1947)Google Scholar and J. B. Steane's edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).

12 Another theory about the door to the street outside Lovewit's house is proposed by Chambers (p. 123) and Herford/Simpson (Ben Jonson, X, 49)Google Scholar. Chambers suggests “a wall containing…(a) door” was built “out on the stage itself, for action such as speaking through the keyhole requires both sides of the door to be practicable.” S. Musgrove in his edition of the play (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1968) notes that this would mean that “every character entering from the street must be seen by the audience well before the entries implied in the text” (p. 7), which is clearly impossible.

13 See, for example, Steane's edition and Williams, p. 131.

14 Editors have not specified that the window is used at I, ii, 162 or III, ii, 162, but, as shown above in my discussion of the window's position and Flicker's misdesignation of the upstage door, the assumption is implicit in the text.

15 Herford, and Simpson, (Ben Jonson, X, 49)Google Scholar in a list of Dol's use of the window on stage include both I, iv, 6,7 and IV, vii, 107–108. In both cases, however, the motivation for Dol's entrance on stage is her knowledge that someone is arriving at the house.

16 There are some disagreements among scholars about whether or not there were act breaks in The Alchemist. Smith argues that there were actual act breaks at Blackfriars — and thus in The Alchemist — during which time candles were relit and possibly interact entertainment occurred of the sort dramatized in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (pp. 223–230). Even at the Globe where act breaks were more unlikely, Jonson clearly included them in 1603 in Sejanus. The direction “CHORVS — Of Musicians” (Herford/Simpson, Ben Jonson, IV) separates each act. Smallwood assumes there would have been no act breaks in The Alchemist except between II and III (p. 146). His thesis that there is “absolut unity of time” in the play, that “performance time” and “real time…are synonymous” (p. 146) dictates that assumption. His discussion does not deal with the observations and arguments put forth by Smith and does not explain why at the end of II Face postpones Mammon's entrance. Mares, like Smallwood, does not believe there were act breaks. In referring to the arrival of Mammon at the end of III, he states that such “audience preparation would lose its point if followed at once by an interval in which it could be forgotten” (p. xlv). To me that sentence simply does not make theatrical sense.

17 In his discussion of the privy, Williams “proves” that Jonson fixed the “locale…definitely by having all the knaves leave with Dapper and return from the other door with Mammon” (p. 131). They leave because it is the end of the act (III). Only Face enters with Mammon at the beginning of the next scene.

18 See Surly's entrance, IV, ii–iii, and, in V, iv, Drugger's reported arrivals, once alone and once with the parson.

19 I am not alone in arguing that Dol's arrival is no accident. Mares, for example, speaks of “Subtle's simulated rage at the end of the scene” (p. 1).

20 Musgrove is an exception. In his edition Face appears as Jeremy and the line “Here comes the Captain” is given to Subtle, rather than to Dapper, precisely because Dapper “cannot be allowed to see Face as Jeremy”(p. 122). Some editors note that Dapper is blindfolded until after Face leaves, yet still specify that Face enters dressed as Captain. See, for example, Crofts, Bentley's Classics edition and Kernan's, Alvin B.The Yale Ben Jonson edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

21 A Mermaid Dramabook (N.Y.: Hill and Wang, 1966), p. 131.

22 The only entrance or exit that could possibly be through the main door is Dapper's exit at V, iv, 61. Surely, however, it is inconsistent with the play's build for him to use that when no one else opens it for almost 400 lines and when so much attention is focused on it. Dapper's exit is not a pronouncement; it is a scuttling away.

23 In George Peele's Old Wives Tale there is a similar transformation of the stage from outside the storyteller Madge's house to inside, not by the characters who have been lost in the wood entering through a door, but by Madge entering the stage.