George Colman the Elder:
Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘Colman, George, the elder (bap. 1732, d. 1794)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [ accessed 23 May 2008]
Colman, George, the elder (bap. 1732, d. 1794), playwright and theatre manager, was born in Florence and baptized there at the church of San Giovanni on 18 April 1732, the son of Francis Colman (bap. 1691, d. 1733), envoy to the court of the grand duke of Tuscany, and his wife, Mary, née Gumley (d. 1767). His father, who is credited with the authorship of the Opera Register, adapted the libretto for Handel's Arianna in Creta (1734) and helped the composer re-engage the leading castrato Senesino for London. After her husband's death at Pisa on 20 April 1733 Mary Colman returned with her son to London, where a house was provided for her in St James's Park in which she lived until her death.
Education and early literary work
George Colman's education was overseen by his shrewd and wealthy guardian William Pulteney, earl of Bath, who was the husband of Mary Colman's sister. George was sent to WestminsterSchool, where Pulteney's son William was also a pupil. There he made many friends, including Charles Churchill, Robert Lloyd, Bonnell Thornton, and William Cowper, and had a successful academic career, entering ChristChurch, Oxford, in 1751 as first among the Westminster king's scholars. In September 1753 his essay on literary criticism, ‘A vision’, was published anonymously in The Adventurer and January 1754 saw the first issue of The Connoisseur. This weekly publication, consisting largely of polished, lively, pleasantly satirical essays, was produced jointly by Colman and Bonnell Thornton and ran to 140 issues before it closed in September 1756. The editors personalized themselves jointly as ‘MrTown’, and wrote most of the articles, although there were contributions by William Cowper (with whom he formed the Nonsense Club), Robert Lloyd, and others. Colman and Thornton also collaborated on a two-volume edition of work by female poets, Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755). Pulteney was determined that his nephew should distinguish himself in the law and in May 1755 Colman entered Lincoln's Inn. He was called to the bar in January 1757 and between 1758 and 1761 he worked on the Oxford circuit. His autobiographical poem ‘The law student’, written in 1757, depicts family pressures upon him, with his aunt insisting ‘Turn Parson, Colman! That's the way to thrive’ and his uncle crying ‘stick close; close, Coley, to the Bar!’. However, ‘the brisk heir to forty thousand pound’ was disinclined to legal labours and attracted to the world of literature and the London theatre (Colman, Prose, 2.285–7).
David Garrick and Drury Lane
In May 1757 Colman published and sent to David Garrick a pamphlet in the actor's praise, ironically entitled A Letter of Abuse, to D—d G—k, Esq. This led to his friendship with Garrick, who encouraged Colman and staged his comic afterpiece Polly Honeycombe at Drury Lane on 5 December 1760. The piece, which makes fun of sentimental novels and their female readers, had a shaky first night but recovered to achieve fifteen performances during the season and frequent later revivals. It appeared anonymously and was generally attributed to Garrick himself until on 12 December, at a performance specially requested by the king, the actor–manager added lines to the prologue declaring it was by ‘a young Beginner’ not ‘a batter'd sinner’ (Danchin, 771). Colman's pamphlet Critical Reflections on the Old English Dramatick Writers, addressed to Garrick, appeared in January 1761. Garrick helped Colman to prune his comedy The Jealous Wife, which was premièred at Drury Lane on 12 February with the leading roles played by Hannah Pritchard, Kitty Clive, and Garrick himself. Hopkins, the company's prompter, noted that it ‘met with greater applause than anything since the Suspicious Husband’ (Stone, 843) and the Gentleman's Magazine (1st ser., 31, 1761, 54) found it a comedy with ‘few equals, and no superior’. It held the stage for the rest of the century and beyond.
Charles Churchill's satire The Rosciad (March 1761), which praised Garrick, Colman, and Thornton while attacking many theatrical personalities of the day, gave rise to vicious attacks on Colman and his associates by the playwright Arthur Murphy and others. As a result ‘much good writing and much wit and humour were thrown away in this very acrimonious and disgraceful controversy’ (Baker, 1.136). In April 1761 Colman and Thornton, with the support of Garrick, began publication of the St James's Chronicle. The paper appeared three times a week and contained literary and theatrical gossip, anecdotes, and entertaining articles. In addition to many smaller items, Colman contributed fifteen longer papers, signed ‘Genius’, between June 1761 and January 1762. The issue for 20 June consists of his ‘Portrait of the author, and description of his person’, a comic dissertation on his lack of height:
As I walk along the street, I hear the men and women say to one another, there goes a little man!—In a word, it is my irreparable misfortune to be, without my shoes, little more than five feet in height. (Colman, Prose, 1.22–3)
Colman's comic afterpiece The Musical Lady was premièred on 6 March 1762. It ridiculed the fashion for Italian music and Jane Pope played the affected heroine, as she had done so successfully in Polly Honeycombe.
Colman had now abandoned the law and his identification with the world of the theatre was strengthened by his liaison with Sarah Ford (d. 1771), the mother of his son George Colman, who was born on 21 October 1762. Sarah had been seduced by the actor Henry Mossop, who deserted her and their daughter Harriet when he moved to Ireland in autumn 1759. Colman became her protector, treating Harriet as his own child. In September 1763 Garrick, who was exhausted by the strain of acting and managing the Drury Lane company and depressed by the theatre riots that January, left England for an extended continental holiday. He did not return to London until April 1765 and in his absence the theatre was managed by his brother George, James Lacy, and Colman. William Powell, who had been coached by Garrick, made a successful stage début at Drury Lane in October 1763 in the title role of an adaptation by Colman of Beaumont's and Fletcher's Philaster. A month later came the première of Colman's comic afterpiece The Deuce is in him, which was received with cries of bravo. A version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (23 November 1763), with the fifth act cut and many songs added, was Colman's first theatrical failure. Hopkins commented: ‘The Performers first Sung the Audience to Sleep, & then went to Sleep themselves’ (Stone, 1021). Colman, who had taken considerable trouble over the production, pruned it ruthlessly into an afterpiece, The Fairy Tale, which was performed only three nights later with considerable success. The fairies were played by children, with the nine-year-old Harriet Ford as Titania.
Colman's cousin William, the only surviving child of the earl of Bath, died in February 1763 and it was generally expected that Colman, who had been treated as ‘his second son’ (Colman, Some Particulars, 5), would inherit the earl's fortune. However, when Bath died in July 1764 he provided Colman with an annuity of 900 guineas but left his estate to his childless brother, General Henry Pulteney. Colman wrote no new plays or adaptations for Drury Lane during the second season of Garrick's absence but continued to be active in the management. The Comedies of Terence, his translation of six plays into blank verse, with an introductory essay and commentaries, was published in 1765 to critical acclaim.
Before Garrick's departure for the continent, he and Colman had begun writing a comedy together and work on this was resumed when Garrick returned to London in 1765. Letters and drafts of The Clandestine Marriage show that there were joint discussions on all parts of the play and that it was very carefully designed for the acting skills and personalities of the Drury Lane company. The friends quarrelled when Garrick, who wished to withdraw from the creation of new roles, refused to play the part of the elderly fop Ogleby which had been designed for him, and there were then arguments about their respective shares in the work. However, they were on friendly terms again by Christmas 1765. In the first edition of the play text (1766) the work was jointly acknowledged, and the ‘Advertisement’ to the play in Colman's Dramatick Works (1777) states: ‘Some friends, and some enemies, have endeavoured to allot distinct portions of this play to each of the Authors. Each, however, considers himself as responsible for the whole’ (1.152). The Clandestine Marriage was premièred on 20 February 1766, with a superlative cast led by Thomas King as Ogleby and Kitty Clive as Mrs Heidelberg, and enjoyed an unbroken run of thirteen nights. The mixture of sentiment and satire, the humour of the situations, and the opportunities offered to its actors have kept the play in the theatrical repertory to the present day. It was soon translated into French and German and an operatic version, Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto, premièred in Vienna in 1792, has also enjoyed lasting success. Garrick wanted Colman to work with him on an adaptation of Wycherley's The Country Wife, but Colman was feeling unwell and went to Paris to recuperate, taking Sarah Ford and Harriet. Garrick wrote cheerfully to him about meetings with little George and the progress of Colman's villa, Bath House, which was being built at Richmond. A new piece by Colman, The English Merchant, a five-act comedy based on Voltaire's L'Écossaise, was produced at Drury Lane in February 1767. More sentimental and moral than Colman's earlier plays, it enjoyed some success, largely because of the character of the plain-spoken, benevolent English merchant, Freeport, created by Richard Yates.
Covent Garden patentee
While Garrick ruled at Drury Lane, London's other patent theatre, Covent Garden, was managed by John Rich until his death in 1761 and then by his son-in-law, the tenor John Beard. By 1767 Beard's increasing deafness made him wish to retire from the theatre and the patent was made available for purchase at £60,000. Two wealthy young businessmen, Thomas Harris and John Rutherford, invited the actor William Powell and Colman to join them in running the theatre. With the help of a legacy of £6000 from his mother, who died in May 1767, Colman raised £15,000 for his share of the patent. He still had hopes that he would finally inherit the Bath fortune, but when General Pulteney died in October 1767 he bequeathed the bulk of the estate to a distant relative and left Colman an annuity of £400. Although Colman later claimed that Pulteney had accepted his acquisition of the share in the patent, it is almost certain that it was his involvement with the theatre and his refusal to give up Sarah Ford which alienated the general. Colman married Sarah on 12 July 1768 at St John, Horsleydown, Bermondsey.
The contract between the new Covent Garden patentees was carelessly drawn up, Colman's actions being subject to veto by Harris and Rutherford, who had no practical knowledge of the theatre. They soon had mistresses in the company and problems started when they demanded preferential treatment for their favourites. They accused Colman of assuming excessive powers, the quarrel became public, and a pamphlet war about the dispute was waged throughout 1768. Despite the disarray, Covent Garden had a successful and profitable first season under the new management, with the actors responding well to Colman's direction. Rutherford sold his share in the patent to Henry Dagge and James Leake in summer 1768, and they joined Harris in a lawsuit against Colman which reached chancery in July 1770, when judgment was given in Colman's favour. By this time passions were cooling, for Covent Garden under Colman was consistently profitable. In November 1771 the managers ‘met together without the interposition of any other persons, shook hands, dined at Mr. Colman's, and put a final stop to all the proceedings at law’ (GM, 1st ser., 41, 1771, 520). Harris matured into a very competent manager who was to remain at Covent Garden until his death in 1820.
The strength of Covent Garden under Rich and Beard had been in music and spectacle, so Colman set out to reinforce the acting company. He engaged Richard Yates and his wife, persuaded Charles Macklin to give his famous interpretation of Shylock, and gave William Powell six leading Shakespearian roles in the first season. He produced his own short farce The Oxonian in Town in November 1767, while February 1768 saw his adaptation of King Lear, which was nearer to Shakespeare than the version generally in use but retained a happy ending and omitted the Fool. Powell's sudden death at Bristol in July 1769 was a serious blow. Colman wrote a prologue for the benefit performance for Powell's family at the Bristol Theatre and an epitaph for Powell's tomb in Bristol Cathedral. The actor's widow took over his share in the patent and was co-defendant with Colman in the case brought by the other patentees. Colman's contribution to the theatre as a dramatist in the 1769–70 season was his comedy Man and Wife, or, The Shakespeare Jubilee (7 October 1769), which capitalized quickly on Garrick's rain-soaked celebrations at Stratford that September. The play incorporated a pageant of characters from seventeen of Shakespeare's plays, accompanied by appropriate music.
The following season Colman wrote two successful afterpieces, the burletta The Portrait (22 November 1770) and the pantomime Mother Shipton (26 December 1770), both with music by Samuel Arnold. Thomas Augustine Arne became musical director in 1771 and provided music for Colman's masque The Fairy Prince (12 November 1771), which was based on Ben Jonson's Oberon. Colman made a two-act version of Comus (17 October 1772) for which Arne had written music many years before and Arne provided new music for two other Colman adaptations, Elfrida (21 November 1772), from a ‘dramatic poem’ by William Mason, and Achilles in Petticoats (16 December 1773), from John Gay's ballad opera Achilles. However, the most important theatrical event of these years for English theatre was the première of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (15 March 1773), put on by Colman without any great hopes of success after Garrick had procrastinated over its production.
Sarah Colman died suddenly on 29 March 1771 after taking the wrong medicine for an illness from which she was recovering. Fanny Burney wrote in her diary:
In point of understanding she was infinitely inferiour to Mr Colman, but she possessed an uncommon sweetness of Temper, much sensibility, & a generous & restless desire of obliging, & of making her friends happy. So amiable a Character must, I am sure, endear her infinitely to Mr Colman, of whom she, with the greatest reason, was beyond expression attached to. He is one of the best Tempered, (though I believe very passionate) of men, lively, agreeable, open Hearted, & clever. (Early Journals and Letters, 1.144)
Colman made the sixteen-year-old Harriet, whom Fanny Burney thought genteel and very well educated, the mistress of his household until she married in 1777. On 30 November 1771 Colman was ‘suddenly seized with a fit’ at the theatre (London Chronicle, 30 Nov–3 Dec 1771) and was forced to rest for several weeks. Personal tragedy and the strain of managing Covent Garden were taking their toll. The 1773–4 season was full of problems, particularly with the elderly and cantankerous actor Charles Macklin. Colman's sentimental comedy The Man of Business (29 January 1774) managed fourteen performances but was never revived. At the end of the season he sold his share in the patent to the actor Thomas Hull for £20,000.
Colman spent six months recuperating in Bath before returning to London. In the summer of 1775 he took his twelve-year-old son on an extended holiday tour, showing him his future Oxford college and travelling north to Yorkshire and Durham. Colman was soon writing again. He contributed a prologue to Garrick's farce Bon Ton, began a translation of Horace's Ars poetica, which he published eight years later, and contributed six essays entitled ‘The gentleman’ to the London Packet, a paper in which he had a share. Garrick staged Colman's adaptation of Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or, The Silent Woman in January 1776, and his satiric farce The Spleen, or, Islington Spa that March, but neither proved a success. At the end of the season Garrick retired from the stage. He had hopes that Colman would purchase his share of the Drury Lane patent, but his friend was unwilling to venture again into management where he could not have sole control. Colman wrote New Brooms! An Occasional Prelude for the first night under the new management, led by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the following May he wrote the epilogue for The School for Scandal while Garrick provided the prologue.