COLMAN, GEORGE (1762-1836), "the Younger," son of the above, was born on Oct. 21, 1762. He passed from West minster school to Christ Church, Oxford, and King's college, Aberdeen, and was finally entered as a student at Lincoln's lnn, London. In 1782 he produced, at his father's playhouse in the Haymarket, his first play, The Female Dramatist, for which Smollett's Roderick Random supplied the material. It was unanimously condemned, but Two to One (1784) was entirely successful. It was followed by Turk and no Turk (1785), a musical comedy; Inkle and Yarico (1787), an opera; Ways and Means 0788); The Iron Chest (1796), taken from William Godwin's Adventures of Caleb Williams; The Poor Gentleman (18o2), John Bull, or an Englishman's Fireside (1803), his most successful piece; The Heir at Law 0808), which enriched the stage with one immortal character, "Dr. Pangloss," and numerous other pieces, many of them adapted from the French.
The failing health of the elder Colman obliged him to relinquish the management of the Haymarket theatre in 1789, when the younger George succeeded him, at a yearly salary of 1600. On the death of his father, he was involved in litigation with Thomas Harris, and was forced to take sanctuary within the Rules of the King's Bench. Here he resided for many years continuing to direct the affairs of his theatre. Released at last through the kindness of George IV., who had appointed him exon of the Yeomen of the Guard, he was made examiner of plays by the duke of Montrose, then lord chamberlain.
Colman died in Brompton, London, on Oct. 17, 1836. He had, as early as 1784, contracted a runaway marriage with an actress, Clara Morris, to whose brother, David Morris, he eventually disposed of his share in the Haymarket theatre. Many of the leading parts in his plays were written especially for Mrs. Gibbs (nee Logan), whom he was said to have married secretly after the death of his first wife.
See the second George Colman's memoirs of his early life, entitled Random Records (183o) and R. B. Peake, Memoirs of the Colman Family (1842) .