“Sober, Scurvy, (and) Precise Neighbours”

Abstract

This chapter returns to Jonson and his attachment to the Blackfriars stage and neighborhood, as both playwright and as parishioner of St. Anne’s. Jonson lived with patrons in the parish and so developed an intimate knowledge of local religious politics and personalities. The chapter focuses on The Alchemist, a play both performed and set in the precinct. In this most localized of plays, Jonson vents his grievances about what he sees as his interfering godly neighbors. At the same time Jonson celebrates Blackfriars’ standing as a liberty at the very moment its privileges were threatened with extinction by James I’s Second Charter of Incorporation.