Colman, George the Elder

1732

1794

The playwright and manager George Colman was born at Florence about 15 April 1732, the son of the aristocratic Francis Colman and his wife Mary Gumley. His father was at the time British ambassador to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. George was given his Christian name because his baptismal sponsor was King George I. After attending Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, he entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1755 and was called to the bar in January 1757. Though he practised some law he mainly turned his efforts to writing odes and pamphlets, including “Critical Reflections on the Old English Dramatists” (1761), in which he made flattering remarks about David Garrick, with whom he was to become associated in writing and managing. His first play was the short afterpiece, “Polly Honeycombe”, which Garrick brought out at Drury Lane on 5 December 1760. Colman’s full-length “The Jealous Wife” was successfully produced by Garrick on 12 February 1761 and became a mainstay of the eighteenth-century repertory. Subsequently he wrote numerous theatre pieces: full-length, one acters, musical interludes and adaptations; among the best were “The Clandestine Marriage” (written with Garrick, first played at Drury Lane on 20 February 1766, with Tom King as Lord Ogleby), “The Deuce is in Him” (1763) and “The Spleen” (1776). While Garrick was on his grand tour on the Continent from 1763 to 1765, Colman directed the production of plays at Drury Lane. In 1767 he became a partner with Harris and Rutherford in the management of Covent Garden Theatre. He enjoyed a successful seven-year reign there, despite his constant bickerings with Harris and some actors and his dispute with the nasty critic William Kenrick over his “The Duellist”. It was as manager of the Haymarket Theatre, however, that Colman demonstrated his greatest managerial skills. In 1776 he bought that theatre from Samuel Foote and operated it under the summer patent until 1789, when its affairs were taken over by his son George Colman the younger (1762-1836). Stricken by a paralytic stroke, the elder Colman spent his last days in an asylum in Paddington, often suffering delusions, until his death on 14 August 1794. Colman occupied much of his life pursuing his literary interests and cultivating his circle of high-society friends and associates. He also was involved in the publication of some newspapers and periodicals. In addition to the portraits of him in the Garrick Club after Reynolds and Zoffany, Colman was painted by Gainsborough (NPG). For more details of the life of this important figure of the eighteenth century, see the BDA (3: 404-420) and K. A. Burnim, “The Plays of George Colman, the Elde”r, 6 vols (1983).