Social issues raised by the Renaissance economic system were often explored in the dramas of the day. The playwright who explored the effect that the nascent free market was having on English society most expansively was Ben Jonson. The dominant theory among literary critics is that Jonson’s plays were written to show the corrupt and sinister side of the market economy. Going against the current, Paul Cantor argues instead that Jonson began to see the market in a positive light in his late play Bartholomew Fair (“In Defense of the Marketplace: Spontaneous Order in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair”). Using the free-market lens that Cantor adopts to interpret this later work, the present chapter focuses instead on an earlier play, The Alchemist (1610). With a plot revolving around scam artists who profit only by other characters losing their money, this comedy admittedly presents some of the worst possible scenarios that capitalism can produce. Nonetheless, the undercurrents in the play show that Jonson is beginning to develop an appreciation for some of the positive outcomes the unregulated market provides. Indeed, throughout the play there are hints that the emerging free market is better than a market controlled by members of the aristocracy or religious leaders. Thus, while Jonson may not have been fully invested in the free market when writing The Alchemist, some of the free-market impulses that he later expresses in Bartholomew Fair are already present in this early play widely considered Jonson’s best and most successful comedy.