Interlinguicity and The Alchemist

Ben Jonson animates The Alchemist with an intersection of languages. In this moral satire, he captures the layered dialects, specialized vocabularies, and social desires of London and holds them up for view. This essay examines the play’s negotiation of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ modes of translation, also with reference to Shakespeare’s treatment of overlapping languages, and to the use of multiple languages in a contemporary Catholic treatise on translation, A Discoverie of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures. Jonson’s conclusion is that the friction between languages offers opportunities for cheats to thrive onstage and off, and that the predominant language of this world is sin, from which only lucid repentance can ‘translate’ us. His satire may stand on godly ground, but his insight is also useful for the current study of translated and adapted literature, particularly Shakespeare.