How to get the jQuery $.ajax error response text?

I am sending an error response to my jQuery. However, I can not get the response text (in the example below this would be **Gone to the beach**) The only thing jQuery says is 'error'. See this example for details: php <? header('HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error'); print "Gone to the beach" ?> jQuery $.ajax({ type: "post", data: {id: 0}, cache: false, url: "doIt.php", dataType: "text", error: function (request, error) { console.log(arguments); alert(" Can't do because: " + error); }, success: function () { alert(" Done ! "); } }); Now my result ist: log: [XMLHttpRequest readyState=4 status=500, "error", undefined] alert: > Can't do because: error Any ideas?