- An "argument," is just a way for an author to summarize the topic of the play.
- We're told that the plague is raging in London and a rich homeowner has hightailed it out of the city to avoid getting sick.
- Meanwhile, he's left his servant in charge of keeping an eye on his pad. (Yep, poor city folk without fancy vacation houses in the country often got the short end of the stick during times of plague because they had nowhere to go.)
- The servant's a total swindler and has hooked up with another con artist (a.k.a. a "cozener") and a prostitute. The three of them are using the house as 1) a brothel and 2) a home base to run a bunch of scams.
- FYI—Jonson gets all fancy in his argument and drops an acrostic on us.
- That just means the first letter of each line spells out this phrase: "THE ALCHEMIST."
- You can check it out here.
- So, why does Jonson do this? Maybe he was hoping his play would be published and read by audiences and not just seen and heard at the playhouse. (He was right. Clever guy, that Jonson.)