Which English playwright is associated with The Alchemist, Valpone, and Epicene?

Which English playwright is associated with The Alchemist, Valpone, and Epicene?

• A. Miguel de Cervantes
• B. John Dryden
• C. Ben Johnson
• D. Edmund Spenser

Answer: (C)

Ben Jonson is the English playwright linked to all three works. These comedies—The Alchemist, Valpone, and Epicene (The Silent Woman)—are classic Jacobean satires written in Jonson’s sharp, witty verse that skewers greed, hypocrisy, and social pretensions. The Alchemist, from the early 1610s, follows con artists in London; Valpone is a later satire about a self-serving opportunist who manipulates those around him; Epicene challenges notions of gender and manners through clever wordplay and mistaken identities. The other writers listed didn’t author these plays—Cervantes is Spanish and wrote Don Quixote, Dryden rose later in the Restoration period, and Spenser is known for The Faerie Queene.

Ben Jonson is the English playwright linked to all three works. These comedies—The Alchemist, Valpone, and Epicene (The Silent Woman)—are classic Jacobean satires written in Jonson’s sharp, witty verse that skewers greed, hypocrisy, and social pretensions. The Alchemist, from the early 1610s, follows con artists in London; Valpone is a later satire about a self-serving opportunist who manipulates those around him; Epicene challenges notions of gender and manners through clever wordplay and mistaken identities. The other writers listed didn’t author these plays—Cervantes is Spanish and wrote Don Quixote, Dryden rose later in the Restoration period, and Spenser is known for The Faerie Queene.