George Colman the Elder was a leading English comic dramatist of his day and an important theatre manager who sought to revive the vigor of Elizabethan drama with adaptations of plays by Beaumont and Fletcher and Ben Jonson.
Background
George Colman was born in April 1732 in Florence, Italy where his father was stationed as British Resident Minister (diplomatic envoy) at the court of the Grand duke of Tuscany. His father died when Colman was a year old, and Colman's uncle, William Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, became his guardian.
Education
He was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford.
Career
Because his guardian wished him to study law, Colman for a long time concealed his growing interest in the theater. He met David Garrick, the English dramatist, and on Feburary 12, 1761, one of Colman's best comedies, The Jealous Wife, was performed at Garrick's Drury Lane Theatre. The Clandestine Marriage, a comedy written in collaboration with Garrick and first produced on Feburary 20, 1766, was also a great success. It later became the source of Domenico Cimarosa's opera Il Matrimonio Segreto (1792). After a quarrel with Garrick, Colman, with several partners, purchased the Covent Garden Theatre. Disagreement among the partners involved them in litigation, but the difficulties were eventually resolved, and a number of plays, including Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, were successfully produced. Colman wrote several more plays and revised many of the Elizabethan dramas. His version of Shakespeare's King Lear restored much of the original text that had been rewritten by Nahum Tate (1652 - 1715), but still provided the work with a happy ending. On May 26, 1774, Colman resigned his post as manager of Covent Garden. He acquired the Haymarket Theatre in 1776 and, after a reconciliation with Garrick, wrote for both his own theater and the Drury Lane. In 1778 he edited plays by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. He published a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica in 1783. The following year Colman suffered a paralytic stroke, but he continued as manager of the Haymarket until 1789, when his son succeeded him. He died in Paddington, London, on August 14, 1794.
Views
Quotations:
"And what 's impossible can't be, And never, never comes to pass. "
"I vow and protest there's more plague than pleasure with a secret. "