High spirits: Alchemy in Elizabethan England

With the arrival of autumn and Halloween just around the corner, the next Mixology event sponsored by the Folger Institute is set to explore another intriguing early modern topic: “Mixology: How Alchemy Gave Us Alcohol.” After all, “without alchemy, there would be no mixology. No cocktails, no spirits, no liqueurs!” 

It seems like the perfect moment for our blog to examine the story of alchemy in Shakespeare’s time. Jennifer Rampling, an associate professor of history at Princeton University and author of The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700 (2020), who teaches in the Program in History of Science, explores the role of alchemy in early modern life, including in Shakespeare’s plays.

Alchemy was a hot topic in Elizabethan England—although, like all fashions, this one had its highs and lows. By the time that Shakespeare set to work in London, a series of scandals and failed ventures had conspired to bring the “royal art” into disrepute. However, its controversial practitioners and rich, mysterious imagery provided ample material for poets and playwrights, Shakespeare among them.

For a time, alchemy looked like the solution to all of England’s problems. Long before Elizabeth became queen in 1558, English alchemists were petitioning the Crown for licenses to practice—a vital step, since the alchemical “multiplying” of metals was illegal. This interest ramped up over the course of the 16th century, as supporters of alchemy published books and secured jobs in European courts. Alchemy caught on among merchants, scholars, priests, and craftsmen. At Cambridge University, several of Elizabeth I’s future advisors, including William Cecil and Thomas Smith, caught the bug. Elizabeth’s accession to the throne put these men in a position where they could sponsor alchemical projects—and there was no shortage of alchemists willing to put their knowledge and experience on the line.

From one angle, early modern alchemists look like modern entrepreneurs, pitching start-up projects to wealthy investors. In 1565, the Dutch alchemist Cornelius De Lannoy obtained significant Crown funding after promising specific yields of transmuted gold. Other practitioners focused on alchemical medicine. Against a backdrop of heightened political and religious tension, the flexibility of alchemical applications added value to funding proposals (or “patronage suits”): offering to bolster England’s finances with alchemical bullion, while preserving the queen’s life and health with distilled elixirs. In return, royal patronage offered opportunities for wealth, credit, and advancement to a class of practitioners who might otherwise have struggled for social mobility.

De Lannoy failed to hit his targets, and Elizabeth’s interest in alchemy quickly cooled. However, his initial success prompted a stream of suits from alchemical practitioners throughout the 1560s and 70s. In private households, tradesmen’s shops, even the royal Mint, would-be philosophers collected and tested alchemical recipes—an interest that flourished well into the 17th century. Their legacy is preserved in print and manuscript: hundreds of recipe books packed with thousands of practical procedures, some of which can still be replicated in laboratories today.

At the same time, self-styled alchemical philosophers went beyond practice, rationalizing their work using concepts drawn from natural philosophy and religious discourse. Take John of Rupescissa, the 14th-century visionary who popularized the alchemical use of alcohol. By repeatedly distilling wine, John claimed to have made a powerful solvent—the quintessence of wine, “our heaven.” John viewed his practice in terms of apocalyptic prophecy, predicting that this affordable medicine would aid his fellow Franciscans in their eventual battle with Antichrist.

John’s writings influenced the course of English alchemy, but in diverse ways. Some readers extracted purely practical information, which they recorded in books on medical distillation. Others tried to place the divine medicine in a longer timeline. One English translator claimed that the quintessence was first revealed by an angel to Hermes Trismegistus, “the prophet and king of Egypt after the flood of Noah.” Pitching his own project to Elizabeth in 1573, Samuel Norton suggested that the quintessence was known to Hippocrates and Galen, who kept the knowledge secret until its rediscovery by medieval alchemists.

Another of Elizabeth’s petitioners, William Blomfild, took advantage of alchemy’s many-layered, allegorical language. This former monk-turned-radical Protestant preacher wrote to Elizabeth around 1574, garnishing his suit with biblical quotations and alchemical recipes. When Blomfild assured the queen that “our heaven may be adorned with stars and beautified,” he was not referring to the night sky, but to John of Rupescissa’s “heaven,” the quintessence of wine. The stars (or planets) denoted the seven metals, which alchemists attempted to dissolve in wine-based solvents. By steeping “Saturn,” or lead, in the quintessence, then distilling the resulting oily liquor, Blomfild promised to reveal “higher secrets”—white crystals that tasted as sweet as sugar, offering medicinal benefits.

Modern chemists might wince at this recipe for “sugar of lead,” better known today as lead acetate, a toxic carcinogen. For Blomfild, the dissolution of hard metallic bodies into clear liquids and sweet-tasting crystals was a marvel, one that “may bring wonderful effects to pass.” This blending of philosophical language, technical know-how, and sheer wonder contributed to alchemy’s peculiar status as art, science, and esoteric doctrine.

Alchemy’s potent language, often satirized by critics of the art, was also ripe for exploitation by poets. Chemical processes like distillation, which separates pure from impure, gold from dross, were rich in metaphorical promise. When Shakespeare’s Henry V readies himself for battle, he does so with a chemical analogy in hand:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distill it out.
—Henry V, Act 4, scene 1, lines 4-5

And another Shakespearean monarch, the King of France in All’s Well that Ends Well, makes a point by invoking the natural knowledge required for alchemical multiplication:

Plutus himself,
That knows the tinct and multiplying med’cine,
Hath not in nature’s mystery more science
Than I have in this ring.
—All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 5, scene 3, lines 118-121

Alchemists were themselves well aware of the metaphorical value of their speech. Alchemical obscurity provided cover for one of Blomfild’s more problematic interests: using magic to summon spirits. Arraigned for conjuring in 1546, Blomfild seems to have argued his way out of trouble—hinting that the only “spirit” he knew was the spirit of wine.

Magic was also a preoccupation of Blomfild’s more famous contemporary, John Dee, who explored both natural and occult philosophy over the course of a varied, polymathic career. In 1564, the year of Shakespeare’s birth, Dee published the Monas Hieroglyphica in Antwerp. This short tract, dedicated to Emperor Maximilian I, marked Dee’s attempt to unify alchemy, astrology, and metaphysics in the form of a single figure, the “hieroglyphic monad.” However, the abstruse nature of the work—which Dee struggled to explain to Elizabeth I during a private audience—set it apart from the kind of pragmatic, profit-oriented project that chiefly interested the queen and her ministers. Despite having considerable practical experience, Dee never gained much of a reputation as an alchemist.

The same cannot be said for his reputation as a conjuror. Dee employed a human medium and a scrying glass to summon angels, recording their answers to a variety of questions, including the preparation of the philosophers’ stone. Financial hardship and angelic advice eventually prompted Dee and his scryer, Edward Kelley, to seek their fortunes overseas. Yet, in a historical irony, it was the medium who proved to be the most successful alchemist. After noticing that his Bohemian patrons were more interested in alchemical gold than angelic wisdom, Kelley abandoned the scrying glass for the distillation vessel. Dee returned to England, leaving his former colleague to enjoy wealth and status in imperial Prague—for a time, at least.

At first, Elizabeth and Cecil attempted to lure the master alchemist back to London. However, Kelley’s high profile arrest in April 1591—shortly before the first known reference to Shakespeare’s work for the stage—dashed any lingering hope of refreshing England’s treasury with transmuted gold. Popular recollection of court scandals and illicit conjuring lived on, surfacing in satirical verse and, perhaps, in the figures of Shakespeare’s Prospero and his angelically named Ariel. But the burst of alchemical optimism that characterized Elizabeth’s early reign had lost its initial shine.