George Colman, the Younger

George Colman, the Younger (born Oct. 21, 1762, London—died Oct. 17, 1836, London) was an English playwright, writer of scurrilous satiric verse, and theatre manager whose comic operas, farces, melodramas, and sentimental comedies were box-office successes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Dr. Pangloss, the elderly pedant in The Heir at Law (first performed 1797), is his only outstanding comic creation. But the comic opera Two to One (1784), his first success; the quasi-operatic Inkle and Yarico (1787); the melodramas The Battle of Hexham (1789) and The Iron Chest (1796), the latter based on William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams (1794); and John Bull (1803), his most popular comedy, long kept their place in the repertoire of the Little Theatre in the Hay, London, the management of which Colman took over from his father. When his father died in 1794, he bought the theatre, though large debts forced him to sell part of his share in 1805 and the rest in 1820. As examiner (or censor) of plays from 1824 until his death, Colman aroused resentment owing to his narrow severity and petty tyranny.