The influence of alchemy and Rosicrucianism in William Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre and The tempest, and Ben Jonson's The alchemist

Bibliography: pages 207-213.This thesis traces the influence of alchemy and its renaissance in the early seventeenth century as Rosicrucianism, in William Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre and The Tempest, and Ben Jonson's The Alchemist. Shakespeare's Final Plays are a dramatic experiment that ventures beyond realism, with a common symbolic pattern of loss and reconciliation that reflects the alchemical one of Man's Fall, self-transmutation and reconciliation with the divine spark within him. Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a crude first attempt in this genre, portraying Everyman's journey to perfection in Pericles's wanderings. The quest for Antiochus's Daughter represents the search for Man'soriginal purity of soul, which has, however, become corrupted and dominated by Man's lower nature, embodied in the incestuous King Antiochus. The prince's flight by sea indicates a process of self-transmutation: the loss of his fleet in a tempest symbolises the purification of his Soul from earthly desires, reflected in the laboratory refinement of base metals in fire (lightning) and water (sea). Pericles is able to unite with his refined Soul, incarnated in Thaisa: from their union the Philosopher's Stone or the Spirit, Marina, is born, who transmutes the base metals of men's natures by evoking the divine "seed of gold" within them, even in a degraded brothel. The Spiritr now grown to strength, is able to reunite the other component of Everyman, Body and Soul, the parents, who have completed their purification. The Tempest represents Shakespeare's complete mastery of his alchemical theme. The Alonso-Ferdinand pair embodies Everyman, the father or Soul having been seduced into evil, incarnate in Antonio, while the son, not yet king, is the divine spark within him. This seed of gold must be separated from the corrupted soul in the purifying alchemical tempest, so as to grow back to the Spirit, symbolised by his meeting and eventual marriage with Miranda. Alonso can only be reunited with his son after his purificatory wanderings about the island, in which he confronts his guilt embodied in a Harpy, who awakens his conscience and reminds him why he has lost his divine inner nature he sought for. Prospero represents the Spirit-Intellect of Everyman, tainted by the lower nature, evident in his desire for revenge, and embodied in Caliban. When the unfallen spiritual forces incarnate in Miranda win him over to compassion, he forgives his enemies and can meet the repentant Alonso, and return to earthly duties as the Everyman who has reclaimed his divine heritage. Ben Jonson's The Alchemist shows the debasement of alchemy by frauds who exploit those who, ignoring its spiritual aims, see it as a magical means to obtain gold. Alchemy becomes a symbol of the goldlust ruling London society, as opposed to the spiritual gold of wisdom sought by the true alchemist. The gulls caricature the goal of self-transmutation in their desire to transmute their mundane, lacklustre selves into "something rich and strange" through the Philosopher's Stone. Jor1sor1, deeply learned in alchemy, parodies many of its key concepts and motifs; the final perfection of Man and Nature, the consummation of the esoteric alchemical Opus, is distorted in false, exoteric alchemy hy the degradation and impoverishment of both frauds and gulls