Colman, George

(1762-1836)

   The son of George Colman (1732-1794), dramatist and manager of the Haymarket Theatre, London, he was educated at Westminster School, Christ Church College, Oxford, and King's College, Aberdeen. He entered into a secret marriage at Gretna Green with a small-time actress; eventually they did marry with his father's blessing, in 1784. Upon the death of his father in 1794 Colman purchased the Haymarket patent. His comic operas, farces, melodramas, scurrilous satiric verse, and sentimental comedies made him a lot of money, which he wasted through extravagance. From 1824 until his death he was examiner (censor) of plays, a task he performed with tyrannical zeal, cutting all references to "God" "heaven" and "providence," and would not even allow a lover to address his mistress as an "angel." He died in London and was buried beside his father under the vaults in Kensington Church. Some of his poems: "Address at Drury Lane," "Bluebeard," "Hero and Leander," "London Rurality," "My Nightgown and Slippers," "Paddy O'Raffarty's Song to an Old Coquette," "Song: Judy O'Flannikin," "The Lady of the Wreck," "The Maid of the Moor, or, The Water-Fiends."

   Sources: Broad Grins, My Nightgown and Slippers and Other Humorous Works, Prose and Poetical of George Colman the Younger. George B. Buckstone, ed. John Camden Hotten, 1872. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1984. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.