Even the most practical and earnest of alchemists needed their Sir Epicure Mammons to fund their endeavours. Two of the greatest pieces of alchemical literature written in the English language, George Ripley’s Compound of Alchemy and Thomas Norton’s Ordinal of Alchemy, were almost certainly written to attract patronage. These texts, therefore, needed to reveal enough about alchemy to entice their potential patrons whilst simultaneously leaving enough out to ensure future investment. In Jonson’s The Alchemist, Sir Epicure, justifying his alchemical investments to the sceptical Surly, reveals a kaleidoscopic knowledge of richly suggestive alchemical titbits, demonstrating just such an amateur’s familiarity with the grand proclamations of this alluring literature:

All the disparate myths he breathlessly recounts are read through the singular and unwavering lens of alchemy. Like Midas himself, Mammon kills the myths of Pandora, the Golden Apples, Cadmus, and all those conjured, by turning them to shining allegories of alchemical gold; he strips them of their narrative, affective, and moral brilliance through monomaniacal interpretation. Whilst it would be unfair to characterise patrons of alchemy as pompous, credulous buffoons in the style of Sir Epicure, it is reasonable to assume that they shared with him an amateur’s comprehension of alchemical theory. Otherwise, there would be no point in writing such beautifully constructed patronage suits to them. It was these such armchair alchemists, I argue, who, intrigued by the promises and the lustre of alchemical language but not quite understanding it properly, laid the foundations for alchemy’s metaphysical reputation beyond the laboratory.