George Colman the Elder

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George Colman the Elder, after Joshua Reynolds, 1768–1770

George Colman (April 1732 – 14 August 1794) was an English

essayist, usually called "the Elder", and sometimes "George the First", to distinguish him from his son, George Colman the Younger
. He also owned a theatre.

Early life

He was born in

William Pulteney- afterwards Lord Bath- whose wife was Mrs. Colman's sister, undertook to educate the boy. After he received private education in Marylebone, George attended Westminster School.[1]

Colman left school in due course for Christ Church, Oxford. There he made the acquaintance of the parodist Bonnell Thornton, with whom he co-founded The Connoisseur (1754–1756), a periodical which "wanted weight," as Johnson said, although it reached its 140th number. He left Oxford after taking his degree in 1755 and, having been entered at Lincoln's Inn before his return to London, he was called to the bar in 1757. The friendship he formed with David Garrick did not advance his career as a barrister, but he continued to practise until the death of Lord Bath, out of respect for his wishes.[1]

Portrait of Colman
Title page of Colman's Terence, 1765

Plays

In 1760, Colman produced his first play,

Covent Garden Theatre, which- allegedly- induced General Pulteney to revoke a will by which he had left Colman large estates. The general, who died that year, did, however, leave him a considerable annuity.[1] A riot took place at the third performance of his play The Oxonian in Town on 9 November 1767, which a claque of card-sharpers apparently started.[2]

Theatre ownership

Colman was the acting manager of Covent Garden for seven years, during which he produced several "adapted" plays of

the Haymarket from Samuel Foote three years later, broken in health and spirits by then. Colman experienced paralysis in 1785; in 1789 his brain became affected and he died on 14 August 1794.[1] He was buried in Kensington Church.[4]

Other works

Besides the works already cited, Colman was author of adaptations of

Ars Poëtica of Horace, an excellent translation from the Mercator of Plautus for Bonnell Thornton's edition (1769–1772), some thirty plays, and many parodies and occasional pieces. An incomplete edition of his dramatic works was published in 1777 in four volumes.[5][1]

Selected plays

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ The Diary of Sylas Neville 1767–1788, ed. Basil Cozens-Hardy. (London, OUP, 1950), p. 27.
  3. ^ Illustrated London News, Saturday 31 October 1896 p8 col2-3: Chapter XII
  4. ^ Dictionary of National Biography
  5. ^ Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, "Colman, George, the elder (baptised 1732, d. 1794)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 29 January 2017, pay-walled.
  • Colman, George, New Brooms!, London, 1776. Facsimile ed., with The Manager in Distress (1780), introduced by J. Terry Frazier, 1980, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, .
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Colman, George". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 695.

External links