Jonson's Alchemist

Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist is the ancestor of all con-man movies; it also is an excellent expression of classical aesthetics. The play centers on what happens when a gentleman leaves his residence in London to avoid the plague. In his absence one of his servants sets up shop posing as an alchemist and takes in many deceived customers; an ever-increasingly complicated sequence of hoaxes culminates in the master's return and a frantic salvaging of the situation/getaway. It's all great fun. And since we're dealing with Ben Jonson here, it hardly appeals to the lowest common denominator: the funniest scene in the play involves a prostitute babbling about the book of Daniel.

Some good lines:

Face: By the way, you must eat no cheese, Nab: it breeds melancholy,
And that same melancholy breeds worms. (III.4.110-111)

Dame Pliant: Truly I shall never brook a Spaniard.
Subtle: No?
Dame Pliant: Never sin' eighty-eight could I abide 'em,
And that was some three year afore I was born, in truth. (IV.4.29-32)

Ananias [a puritan]: Thou look'st like Antichrist, in that lewd hat. (IV.7.56)

Lovewit [the master of the house]: Gentlemen, what is the matter? Whom do you seek?
Mammon: The chemical cozener.
Surly: And the captain pandar.
Kastril: The nun my sister.
Mammon: Madam Rabbi.
Ananias: Scorpions, and caterpillars. (V.5.20-23)